The Dragon Of The Black Pool

Deep the waters of the Black Pool, colored like ink; They say a Holy Dragon lives there, whom men have never seen. Beside the Pool they have built a shrine; the authorities have established a ritual; A dragon by itself remains a dragon, but men can make it a god. Prosperity and disaster, rain and drought, plagues and pestilences— By the village people were all regarded as the Sacred Dragon’s doing. They all made offerings of sucking-pig and poured libations of wine; The morning prayers and evening gifts depended on a “medium’s” advice. When the dragon comes, ah! The wind stirs and sighs Paper money thrown, ah! Silk umbrellas waved. When the dragon goes, ah! The wind also—still. Incense-fire dies, ah ! The cups and vessels are cold. Meats lie stacked on the rocks of the Pool’s shore; Wine flows on the grass in front of the shrine. I do not know, of all those offerings, how much the Dragon eats; But the mice of the woods and the foxes of the hills are continually drunk and sated. Why are the foxes so lucky? What have the sucking-pigs done, That year by year they should be killed, merely to glut the foxes? That the foxes are robbing the Sacred Dragon and eating His sucking-pig, Beneath the nine-fold depths of His pool, does He know or not?