Poetry

Dragonspeak

I’ll tell you how I came by it that heap
of glistening gold they stole from me.
Flying above the earth, mountain and sea
mapped out below, looking for a place
to roost or nest, I saw the cave mouth.
not knowing of course what lay inside
went in. A gleam in the gloom from the darkest
depths under a high arched roof. No guardian
that I could sniff out or I would have thrashed
my tail and backed out as is the rule.
So I claimed it by squatter’s right and as rightful
keeper and the centuries passed.

Some nights I’d take a trip to exercise
the old flame-thrower; they clinker up
you know with disuse, burn up a few miles
of moorland while the humans shivered
beside their fires telling tall tales how the hoard
came there, left by the last prince of his people
abandoned. Typical of mankind. No
stamina. New comers while we’d been around
for aeons before they stood up on their hind legs
after the catyclysm when dark and cold
enveloped the earth. I’m one of the last.
My mother survived ,went back to the sea depths
to bear me, a single egg. I grew up
fed on fire til my time came: I was strong enough
to paddle up into the sunlight.

They’ll blame me of course; humans always do.
A scorched earth policy they’ll dub it
just because I torched their proud Heorot
like any herdsman’s hut. But it was mine
wasn’t it, guarded through ages in the place
I’d made my home til that thief, that outcast
stole in and nicked a golden goblet, hoping
to buy his way back in, appease the men
with its glitter, offer to lead them
to my treasure trove. Then I was mad
went abroad flaming on my wide wings
breathing out scorching wrath. Showed them.

So the old man boasted he’d come after me
grey hairs and all. Got himself a shield of steel
hefted his trusted grey sword, alone against me.
I’m old too but with us it doesn’t count.
Centuries pass, our scales burnish to iron.
Wings strengthen, flame breath lengthens
a furnace stoked by time. He came on
to single combat, trusting in old skills
old conquests, with his ancient blade that broke
on my bone. But it bloody hurt so I torched him.
Then up comes this lad wanting to be a hero.
I blasted his shield down to the boss, to charcoal.
So he hides behind the old man’s but when
I rush in again fuming fire and the old
grey sword snaps in my head and I sink
my teeth in the withered neck, the boy
sticks me deep in my guts with his knife.

I feel my fire going out and the old one
takes his knife too from his belt and cuts me
in half. The indignity of it: my eyes dimming
my tail still thrashing about like a severed worm.
But he had no time to gloat. His bitten neck swells and burns with my poisonous spittle.
the knife blade melts in my venomous blood.
Then they ransacked my gold to heap on his pyre
and me they rolled to the top of the cliff
and over into the waves boiling below.
I sank down, down, down far below to where
we once came to hatch our rubbery eggs
so the dragonlets could play at the fissures
in the earth’s crust, those chimneys where boiling
magma spews out to nourish them, kindle
their first flame before they can rise through the murk
take wing. That was long ago. Now I roll
with the thrust of the tides, the heave of the earth’s
plates, shields locking together in the wall
or breaking, drifting apart. But remembered
by men wherever the prince’s death is sung.

March 20th 2010

Lyrics for the Dog Hour (poems) (1968)

New Short Plays: No. 2 (1969)

Venus Touch (poems) (1971)

Evesong (poems) (1975)

Memorials of the Quick and the Dead (poems) (1979)

Collected Poems, 1949-84 (poems) (1985)

Pool: New Fiction from Liverpool John Moores University (2001)

Family Values

Publication September 1st from Enitharmon Press
over forty new poems. pp 62 (£8.55)
'These are tough poems, full of love and harm, good and damage, rage and compassion.'
David Constantine. Jump to top