I am Dragon

.... how the Dragon slayers murdered magic

 

I am a Dragon
My name? .... I doesn´t matter. YOU wouldn´t know it anyhow.
You´d rather know me by the man who killed me. The "hero" ...
For I am the Dragon Siegfried slayed.
Remember Siegfried? - The one I made invincible with MY blood?
Well, not QUITE invincible, of course ...
because, in the end, HE was slain as well.
By his own kind - as seems to be the way with Man.

But ...
enough of Siegfried.
I wanted to tell you about me. About me and HIM.
Because
to begin with, we were two.
Even then we were, as they said,
the LAST of our kind.

It did not matter.
Because we were ONE.
We never knew where the one ended and the other started.
What we did, we did together.
We .... breathed fire,
guarded treasure,
defended virtue and, sometimes - nay, often -
we simply sailed the skies in wanton, gay abandon.

And, yes, at times we scared those narrow-minded creatures
that cowered in the trees and chattered like monkeys.
But even then, when they - when YOU - were nothing
but frightened mice running from predators ...
Even then, we knew it had begun to be THEIR world, THEIR age.
Our age, the age of magic and wonder,
the age of Dragons and Faeries,
of Elves and Unicorns ...
that age had come and gone.

It mattered little to us.
Because the most precious of all the treasures we ever guarded
was our love.
We were .... INVINCIBLE.
Untouchable.
Immortal.
We had each other. We had us.
And if the world around us crumbled
we still had US.

And crumble it did, our world.
Because those frightened little mice,
those chattering monkeys we had chased from our caves
and frightened in their fields ....
those HUMANS ...
One by one they silenced the voices of magic and the songs of wonder.
And, worse still,
those they would not understand, they feared ...
and those they hunted down and killed.

The Faeries were the first to go, the most vulnerable and fragile.
Next, the Elves ... so unassailable in their cool beauty,
but far too eager to teach Man their wisdom.
Then, the Unicorns,
those pure and innocent keepers of dreams and immortality.
The last of them we found one sad day
lying in his silvery blood,
breathing his last ....
That day, the world as we knew it, went dark.
We saw it and we wept.
We grieved, our hearts were taut with sorrow.
And yet ... we still had US.

But then it was our turn.
Because us they never understood and ALWAYS feared.
They sent their Dragon slayers out to hunt us -
those cocky men they should later on call "Saints" for their murders.
One by one, we saw our Dragon kin fall.
We wept. We grieved.
But we still had US.

Then
one of those cocky, soon-to-be sainted men
came and killed Him.
I won´t say more than this:
He came, he killed him and he was sainted.
HE, my love, my heart, my soul, was NOT.
They said .... he was a "monster".
They knew nothing.
Not then, not now, nor ever will.
But THEIR age,
YOUR age - like ours - will pass ...
some day soon.

They killed Him, when I was from his side, guarding the eggs.
Our eggs,
our love´s tomorrow,
our future.

But suddenly, there was no future.
I raged and rampaged.
I smashed the eggs in my rage.
I needed no more future.
There WAS no future.
Not without Him.

And then,
the dragon of my fury got unleashed.
I roared.
I screamed.
I breathed oceans of fire,
I torched their villages
I blazed angry paths through their fields.
I hunted them, as they had hunted us.
Men, women, children, old and young.
I cared not.
I had no mercy.
No eyes or ears for THEIR pain.
I saw only WHAT they were, not WHO.
Dragon destroyers all ....
Murderers.
Murderers of magic.

Of course,
they soon sent their Dragon hunters for me.
They were no match for my rage.
But, as my rage, turned into pain ....,
killing THEM, hunting THEM, torching their villages ,,,,
it could no longer satisfy me..
No matter how many of them I killed,
it would not bring HIM back to me.

How long I raged?
Who knows?
We Dragons never knew the need to measure time.
We were .... immortal - remember?

But
in the end, this immortality was but a curse.
In the end
I only wanted it to end.
And I remembered that painful weary sigh
in that last Unicorn´s dying eyes
when He had breathed his last
all those, oh, so many human years before ....
He, too, had been the last of HIS kind then
and in this dying eyes we had seen him
pining for HIS long-lost love ...

So when finally
those humans sent another Dragon slayer after me,
I was determined that HE should be the last.
I was determined I would die.

I waited.
I saw him strutting through the forest,
cocky, confident step.
But I knew better.
I has forever been the Dragons´  curse
to look into the hearts of men.
As I looked into HIS,
I saw the fear,
fear of dying, yes, but more it seemed the fear of living.
Living without the one HE loved,
I saw his heart was heavy,
for a love that could not be ...

He charged and I made no effort to defend me.
He seemed .... surprised.
But not quite enough to drop his guard.
Yet, for all his courage and his shiny blade,
he could not cut me.
Invincible - remember?
In the end,
I offered up my tender, vulnerable underbelly for the coup de grace.

He was .... perplexed.
Froze, sword raised motionless above his head.
Stared at me from those pale, sky-blue eyes.
And for a moment,
just ONE moment,
we saw each other as we were,
the self-same pain reflected in the other´s eyes.
Mine for the love I had lost
and his for the love he could not gain.
And in that moment .... I think he understood.
For, as the thrust that blade up to the hilt into my belly,
just before my mind went blank and I could no longer hold a thought,
I heard him whisper softly,
"I am sorry ..."

 

Reviews

[THERISA]

A moving and touching poem, about "man's" need to destroy something, which "he" doesn't understand or fears. Using the dragon and Siegfried, as the metaphor, to explain this behavior, is pure brilliance. Sadly, i wish Dragons weren't creatures of fantasy. Rather the tutors, humanity needs to guide us. Thank you for sharing this very insightful poem with us.

[Anissa Amer]

vivid

[The Scholar]

Breathtaking.

[Greg the Bard]

This is more an Ode than a single poem. I love the flow and the story. You have a wonderful way with locking images to the next set of words whitch draws the reader along. That is a great tool in writing. I could review this all day long and never get tired of seeing the movement of the story but the truth is you as the reader either like this or you do not. Me I love it.

[Gandré]

awww Siegfried.. how interesting. I love this name in order to explain to me double mentality, ambiguous behavior, pretentioussness.... your poem was deep and meaningful.

[Silvia - Scribo, Ergo S..]

hahaha..... me too! I forever root for the dragon, never for the dragon slayer.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I love this! I'm a big fan of dragons. I have up a cartoon of a dragon picking his teeth with a broken lance sitting beneath a tree. Nearby is a stack of empty armor with the caption, " Sometimes the dragon wins!"