You could feel it again, the world descending
Like a veil over itself, a nictating membrane,
And, as before, as always, you couldn’t be
Certain whether it might be defending itself
Against irritants or just obscuring an ending.
The monster dragon of random occurrences
Blinked that vast, sleepy cat’s eye. It would
Be different this time, this time again, again.
But would it also be more or less the same?
Hmm. Any storm would be simpler than such
Uncertain weather. Largely the same, largely
The same: what does it mean for something
To be largely the same? If every point made
Were, like every point passed in the change,
Unique and never exactly the same, wouldn’t
It be the case as well, that nothing was ever
Wholly not the same? An absolute change in
Anything would entail the end of everything.
Thus extinction had always remained,
However dreadful, always local and partial.
The dragon sleeping below your feet, below
The mountains, could be beaten, had been
Beaten by the sky gods, knights, and heroes
Of human imagination, again and again, and
Yet was never, never could be, extinguished.
You could wonder, if you wanted, whether
It only slept, like any living thing it spawned,
The better to feel real hunger when it woke.
An occasionally screeching dog somewhere
Down the block, voices from an open shop,
A motorcycle leaving, a chainsaw whining
High in the woods, a thrush singing behind
The small porch of another borrowed house,
An indecisive thunderhead, and the ghost
Of a siren far down the winding highway
All spoke to the heart of this random dragon.
Blink if you must, but wake up, wake up.
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