The Road to The Dark Tower (63 page)

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 backward 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; nought 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 Judgment’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 in mine to fix me to the place

That 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 men 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 foot-print 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!

Nought in the distance but the evening, nought

To point my footstep further! At the thought,

A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,

Sailed past, nor beat 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

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!

How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX.

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—

In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,

Progress this way. When, in the very nick

Of giving up, one time more, came a click

As when a trap shuts—you’re inside the den!

XXX.

Burningly it came on me all at once,

This was the place! those two hills on the right,

Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;

While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,

Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,

After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart

Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf

Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf

He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—why, day

Came back again for that! before it left,

The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay

Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—

“Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

XXXIII.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled

Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears

Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—

How such a one was strong, and such was bold,

And such was fortunate, yet each of old

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! in a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew.
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

REFERENCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One person alone rarely produces a book. Each of the following people’s fingerprints appears on these pages, and I would like to acknowledge their assistance and support.

Stephen King’s generosity in allowing me access to the final three
Dark Tower
books before they were published turned my vague notion of a book that I might write one day into something imminent and vital. It seems trite to say that without him this project wouldn’t have happened, for that is self-evident, but his contribution goes far beyond the thirty years of creative energy that went into creating the
Dark Tower
mythos.

Marsha DeFilippo always graciously and patiently answered what must have seemed to her like a steady stream of questions.

Ron Martirano took the stack of chapters I first sent him and showed me how to turn it into a book. He’s the first editor I’ve ever worked with who understood the big picture of the project, who had his own vision of what the book should look like while respecting mine. He’s also the only person I could discuss
Dark Tower
philosophy with for nearly a year, and our correspondence concerning some of the more profound implications of the final books helped me to solidify my own thinking on the subject. Ron also braved a cold, snowy winter day to take the photographs that grace this volume.

Michael Psaltis not only saw the promise in this project, but has become steadfastly interested in my future as a writer, which is music to any author’s ears.