[lit-ideas] The Dragon

“The Dragon”

In the Roman gardens of Villa Pamphili.
Carpaccio's Saint George battles a dragon,
or a giant dog dressed as a flying lion,
stomping on skulls and split torsos--
and the dragon, surprised by his lance, recoils,
pithed in an instant, locked in offended horror.

But there is no horror really, no dragon,
no wasted life, and the slain, a problem solved,
liquefy in ignorance of the combat around them.
Saint George is gone too, exiled to icons.
Only his lance is real in moments of surprise,
haltingly recognized, gilded, shorn, clean of gore,
buried in church walls by saint's bones
under a sarcophagus with effigy.

On the cold sidewalks of a winter town, ad sanctus,
women press cell phones to their cheeks like babies,
and their eyes are elsewhere and they are not failures.
How then to pierce the boil of our own felt failure,
this scale empty of a weighed soul?

The dragon does not die though Saint George has slain it,
slays it still, will slay it, can do nothing but slay it:
the huff of sulfur protests surprise, paws and claws
retrograde, the lance pushes through the back of its throat, forcing back the dragon dying but unfallen forever, a beast of vanity shocked by conquest, rolled back
on haunches, all meat and scales and wings.
The dragon can do nothing but not die.
Not knowing how to die, we populate the world with failure
an entertaining ache to drug the dragon in our skull.

We think our ambition makes us failures
raises the bar at every skillful leap,
lives in envy or takes lack of admiration
as trump and deals from the bottom of the deck.
The nausea hollows we mistake for hunger,
the chill that disguises our fever,
the itching phantom limb.

Carpaccio today is held a lesser talent,
history's bumpkin, his flat brown canvas
good for filling an empty slot in maps,
his naive moves for showing progress
in color, depth, and what is meant by mood.
His failure, he warns, is obvious.
Ours lives behind the eyes,
rides the winds with our coat,
shakes the gravel from our shoes,
signs our name in the script of a lifetime.

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: