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 dragons 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 ninefold depths of his pool, does he know or not?