The Komodo Dragons

The roots of the forest are trembling,
the branches are frosted with fear.
The jeeps and the tanks are assembling.
The komodo dragons are near.

Their skin’s like the ice on the river,
they graze and they raze all that breathes.
The roofs of the cottages shiver.
The earth has gone silent. She grieves.

The earth has lost too many children
before the full moon could return.
The komodo dragons are grinning.
The roofs of the cottages burn.

The stable aflame and the steeple –
the ice on the river now thaws.
This is not the war of the people.
This is the triumph of the jaws.

Christina Egan ©2022

This poem was published (as The Comodo Dragons) in the Haringey Community Press (circulation 15,000) in May 2022.

Komodo dragons got their name because they appear to be mythical creatures, but are real animals, huge lizards which can devour their prey almost without trace.

Two years ago today, the Ukraine was brutally attacked by the military machinery of another country.

When we fear with and grieve with the Ukraine, there are always echos of the Second World War, the First World War, and other wars. My verse is influenced by the famous sonnet Andreas Gryphius wrote in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, Thrähnen des Vaterlandes / Anno 1636 (Tears of the Fatherland).