A Dragon At Twilight
The moon, wheeling in the cool dark serene,
Shines on a garden of broken flowers, palebloom
And azure flowers weaving a shining loom
Of color in this, the heart's withdrawing-room.
The silver moonlight reveals in starts and fits
The moonlit fountain at the heart of it.

There is a fountain somewhere in the garden
That has not been, and never will be.
Above it dreams the amaranth, the willow tree
That we always wanted to find, to see
When children, and we never could.
We never saw the green tears, nor felt the smooth wood.

The amaranth trembles in beauty undying,
But its reflection is more beautiful by far.
The purple and red, the green and blue, will char
Into nothingness when the moon goes afar.
Nothing is so lovely as that on the verge of passing
From the world, beyond our reach or asking.

The stars breathe in the fountain.
The sweet white mist of their breath the light
Swirls and clouds the water, and lessens the moon's might.
The starshine is the spirit of the night
That has gathered in the garden, and will fall 
When goes the dragon who has watched over all.

He curls on the fountain's brink, gazing, only gazing.
He has shrunken from the time when he was grand
And feared no rain of arrows, nor armed warrior's hand,
When stretched his dominion from ocean to desert sand.
But still his scales gleam black as onyx; still the moon
Will find no way through those scales for its light soon.

He lifts his head. Graceful, slender and crowned with horn
On an arching neck, whose dark scales swirl with blue,
It swivels. The reflection in the water swivels too.
To one thing, at least, his beauty is true.
He lowers his head and blows a gusty breath whose flame
Was sacrificed long ago to something with no name.

A small dragon, small and solitary forever.
On his back glimmer his unused wings,
Shields of black gossamer, not spread for ages, for flings
Into the air or for the long glide that sings
In the wind, and tells it a dragon is flying.
He came to the garden, and got on with his dying.

He looks down, and for a moment only the moon reflects
The blue-green eyes, to which a man could lose his soul.
Drown in them, and your spirit founders on a shoal
Of such power and wonder as cannot be understood whole.
He gazes, and then the moon dips behind a cloud.
The dragon at twilight is wrapped in light's shroud.