Poetry of Issue #8        Page 63

COLD COMFORT (INTRUMO)

In a dream a dragon came to me, looked at me,
Splendour of shimmering copper scales
& scarlet thorns, scythe-taloned. I looked
Back, at the amber mist around his huge eyes, above

The fuming nostrils. The red-black smoke from her mouth
Hissed: “Don’t despair, short-lived Earthling. Soon
You shall die, soon will expire your kind’s cosmic contract.
This muddied globe your Mother is unforgiving as our winds.

But in the new creation the Mother shall whelp, a few shards
May be dug up & deciphered by successor populations,
Hexapodes perhaps, stabler far, winged like ourselves:

A few testimonials, like the ones you found of Gilgamesh
& Intrumo, shall show yours was a redeemable kind.
>What a pity!< the unsentimental hexapods will chirrup,

Winging on to their inscrutable business of conviviality”.
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Darko R. Suvin