Alchemisland

Been reading about it since a sprog, Strontium Dog days when I was eight

Lying awake nights wondering is the Congo Snake picture real

Remembering hearing about that on Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World

A colonel from Belgium like an hero poked his camera out of the helicopter

Managed to cop a photograph of something thrice the size of an anaconda

It was the Condor’s wingspan of that domain, plainly a king of primaeval making

Did they not wonder were they in danger as they circled the creature

I am dismayed at the potential for fakery, sleuths say the shrubbery

In the picture is evidence of trick perspective, suggesting the snake as a rubbery

Toy snake from Hector Greys’ pound shop photographed in a rockery

Such chicanery would not truly shock me, part and parcel of the spook scene

But he was reputedly a respected man, what had he to gain from such a plan

Some space in the Fortean Times, titters in the lunchroom, questions about his ability to command

So many cryptid reports originate in the Congo, I’d go if I wasn’t completely unable

Unfit in every way, two days or fewer before I’d be eaten at Lake Tele by Mokele Mbembe

So the pygmies would say to the rescuers who came in my wake

The trip funded by a month of bake sales

I choose to believe the picture is real and depicts a gargantuan snake

A serpent in whose wake furrows are carved, who slakes

On prey as large as a mammoth, takes in its cave entrance mouth

The doubters and entombs them, Knowth inside a snake’s womb.