The Dragon

The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarmsThe size of melons; and golden, too, like melons,They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breastAbove the wet black compost. And becauseThe light was very bright it was hard to see them,And harder still to see what hung between them.A snake hung between them. The bees held up a snake,Lifting each side of his narrow neck, just belowThe pointed head, and in this way, very slowlyThey carried the snake through the garden,The snake’s long body hanging down, its tail draggingThe ground, as if the creature were a criminalBeing escorted to execution or a child kingTo the throne. I kept thinking the snakeMight be a hose, held by two ghostly hands,But the snake was a snake, his body green as the grassHis tail divided, his skin oiled, the way the male memberIs oiled by the female’s juices, the greenness overbright,The bees gold, the winged serpent moving silentlyThrough the air. There was something deadly in it,Or already dead. Something beyond the reportOf beauty. I laid my face against my arm, and thereIt stayed for the length of time it takes two swarmsOf bees to carry a snake through a wide garden,Past a sleeping swan, past the dead roses nailedTo the wall, past the small pond. And whenI looked up the bees and the snake were gone,But the garden smelled of broken fruit, and acrossThe grass a shadow lay for which there was no source,A narrow plinth dividing the garden, and the airWas like the air after a fire, or before a storm,Ungodly still, but full of dark shapes turning.

(2002, Volume 23.2)