24

The Dragon

He is immortal. He cannot be slain,

as Hercules discovered, butchering hydra heads,

and St George, stricken for immolating him

and faded to the eerie ghost left out of the legend,

and Beowulf—though he went knowingly to die

of that mutual wound.

He must not be killed, but sought

and broken to the rein of the heroic will.

Let it be mastery, not murder

of that vast Potency.

In your hour of strength seek him

down those secret, private paths

in the forest of the untrodden mind—

halter slung ready over your shoulder,

stepping lightly as a moth footing

last year’s dead leaves laid on the timeless mulch.

Stalk his ambiguous music.

Trace him unawares, at his lonely best, unobserved.

And some day, initiate in such journeying,

come upon him, perhaps at noon

in some primordial forest glade,

led by the sound of his wordless bassoon.

Look guardedly through the foliage and marvel

how the dappling sun strokes color on his irridescent scales,

how his huge wings yearn upward, like a drying butterfly’s,

how the lifted throat balances that upraised poisonous tail,

and how his reptile head, for this one bright moment,

is transfigured by those inward-looking eyes,

by that wordless utterance that is inchoate music—

his monumental longing to be of man,

to rise and soar and sing.