Gavin Bantock
The Last Dragon
Can be seen from the man in the moon.
Lays its head on the faded purple cushion of Europe.
A molten cannon-ball hovers in its mouth,
its eyes dull stones reflecting the crimson of fires,
yet a brilliant colony of cells, uranium green,
churns still in its frogspawn brain.
Belly lies cold and white, full of undigested bread,
upturned like a dead whale
spreading from Cracow to Kamchatka.
Gut squirms and chortles from the Golden Gate to Manhattan,
dark brown, the richest of manures, to foster perhaps
a fragile blue eden somewhere else in another era.
Bone-white claws gouge highways across the Earth:
far down to the frost-bitten toes of Magellan,
ripping along the banks and lean shins of Ganges,
never touching the white cows, no matter how mad their eyes.
Barnacled tail lashes bitterly in the hissing
precision and steam of horned Asian peninsulas,
yellowed bones visible through tattered parchment.
Its fires are everywhere, far from where they started:
Askja, Stromboli, Krakatoa, the Great Hanshin;
its regurgitations, cess and midden, riddle the oceans.
Gradually relinquishing the hoards it was once guardian of;
its mines and treasuries are running dry.
The moon has no tears.
Gavin Bantock, born in U.K. in 1939, now lives in Japan. Poems in numerous magazines, and in O.U.P. and Faber anthologies. Poetry awards in 1964, 1966, 1969, 1998 (Arvon), and 1999. Latest publications: Just Think of It and SeaManShip (Anvil, 2002); Floating World, A Japanese Collection (Redbeck, 2002).
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