Стивен Кинг: The Dark Tower

VII

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,

Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ

So many times among ‘The Band’ to wit,

The knights who to the Dark Tower’s

search addressed

Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,

And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?

VIII

So, quiet as despair I turned from him,

That hateful cripple, out of his highway

Into the path he pointed. All the day

Had been a dreary one at best, and dim

Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim

Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX

For mark! No sooner was I fairly found

Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,

Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view

O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round:

Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.

I might go on, naught else remained to do.

X

So on I went. I think I never saw

Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!

But cockle, spurge, according to their law

Might propagate their kind with none to awe,

You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.

XI

No! penury, inertness and grimace,

In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See

Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,

‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

’Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place

Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’

XII

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents

Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk

All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk

Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

XIII

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there:

Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

XIV

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,

With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.

And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,

As a man calls for wine before he fights,

I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art:

One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face

Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold

An arm to mine to fix me to the place,

The way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!

Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.

XVII

Giles then, the soul of honour—there he stands

Frank as ten years ago when knighted first,

What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.

Good—but the scene shifts—faugh!

what hangman hands

Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands

Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII

Better this present than a past like that:

Back therefore to my darkening path again!

No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.

Will the night send a howlet or a bat?

I asked: when something on the dismal flat

Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX

A sudden little river crossed my path

As unexpected as a serpent comes.

No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;

This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath

For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath

Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,

Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;

Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit

Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:

The river which had done them all the wrong,

Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI

Which, while I forded—good saints,

how I feared

To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,

Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek

For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!

—It may have been a water-rat I speared,

But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.

XXII

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

Now for a better country. Vain presage!

Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,

Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank

Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank

Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—

XXIII

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,

What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?

No footprint leading to that horrid mews,

None out of it. Mad brewage set to work

Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk

Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV

And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!

What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,

Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel

Men’s bodies out like silk? With all the air

Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware

Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,

Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth

Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,

Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood

Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—

Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.

XXVI

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,

Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s

Broke into moss, or substances like boils;

Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him

Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim

Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII

And just as far as ever from the end!

Naught in the distance but the evening, naught

To point my footstep further! At the thought,

A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom friend,

Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned

That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,

’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

All round to mountains—with such name to grace