Mister Dewer

adapted liberally from English myth

Across the Moor each night
he rides, his pack of hounds -
with glittered teeth
and slavering mounds
of jaw, ugly muscle pumping -
in cold obedience.

Like a coated toff meaning
to satisfy an uncouth need,
he whips his mare and bleeds
a brittle instrument of sound.
A pitted shinbone from
a satchel sewn
with stolen infant flesh.

The moon, by clouds of witness held
like a spoiled toff’s lady
wrapped in taffeta, looks on with haughty
eye. The priests will call his victims
Unbaptised. The progeny
of inattentive serfs. But poetry
enslaved to death will have its audience.

Give up your heart, and bones,
and breath, and still pink flesh
to God. The Dewerstone
is lit with Mister Dewer’s coal, his thresh
and bridling practiced
for games upon the hill.

The Devil is British. And British men
are made in his image. Give up
your flesh to God, lest you wake up
a fox pursued by twenty dogs,
across the Dartmoor hills and bogs.