The Ballad Of The Subway Train

Long, long ago when God was young,
Earth hadn’t found its place.
Great dragons lived among the moons
And crawled and crept through space.

Ten thousand thousand years they lived,
And climbed the hills of night.
Their eyes were as the whizzing suns;
Their tails sharp flails of light.

They bunted meteors with their heads
While unseen worlds dropped by;
And scratched their bronzy backs upon
The ridges of the sky.

The aeons came and went and came,
And still the dragons stayed;
Until one night they chanced to eat
A swarm of stars new-made.

And when God saw them all full gorged,
Their scaly bellies fed,
His anger made the planets shake
And this is what he said:

“You have been feeding, greedy beasts,
Upon the bright young stars.
For gluttony as deep as yours–
Be changed to subway cars!

“No more for you infinite space,
But in a narrow hole
You shall forever grope your way,
Blind-burrowing like the mole!”

So in the earth the dragons crawl
in murky, human roads.
The glory of the heavens once-
They carry human loads.

Creatures that the gorgeous sun
Face to face had seen.
Now are lighted by thin darts,
Of limpid red and green.

And when you’re grinding through the dark
Aboard these “devilish cars,”
They really are the dragons who
Licked up the swarm of stars.