Dragon Bewail

When I set out on my career, my mother said to me,
“To be a dragon’s not at all the delight you’ve supposed.
There is responsibility from which you simply can’t be free
And many obligations which convention has imposed.

You might fancy works of art ­ specialty quaint,
You might well have a delicate constitution,
The disposition of a saint, perhaps a propensity to faint,
Or you might wish to plot a social revolution.

From every such enjoyment you will find yourself denied,

In simple, rustic pleasure you cannot participate,
You have a task to the state, your natural wish to congregate
With ordinary people must be decisively put aside.

When you are encouraged to take your ease with a small libation,
Or pack a picnic lunch with friends and take it for a walk,
You must take your status into your consideration.
Give thought to how the scandal loving citizens would talk.

With culinary preferences, employ the maximum care.
You must deny your natural taste for jam and buttered scones.
Rather boil a maiden fair. Ignore her parent’s tearful prayer.
Develop a preference for the taste of human bones.

Your all-important duties as a monster aren’t light.
Though the piling up of treasure my not be your central pleasure,
You’ve obligations to the spread of plague and blight.
Duty’s road is hard my son, and yet it must be followed.

Cities must be burned and wasted during business hours.
Caves for treasure must be hollowed; knights in armor must be swallowed
A dragon kills and then he indiscriminately devours.
Mind the manners mother taught when you are laying waste.

Keep a obsequious air when blotting out the sun.
Avoiding all unseemly haste when leaving cities in a paste,
And men will say, when you are dead, “his duty is done”

© 2004 Jeffrey L. Williams Jr.

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