The Natural History of Elephants

[Guest guest]

a poem by Milton Acorn:

 

*The Natural History of Elephants*

 

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

The whole world's both table and shithouse

Where he wanders seeking viandes, exchanging great farts

For compliments. The rumble of his belly

Is like the contortions of a crumpling planetary system.

Long has he roved, his tongue longing to press the juices

From the ultimate berry, large as

But tenderer and sweeter than a watermelon;

And he leaves such signs in his wake that pygmies have fallen

And drowned in his great fragrant marshes of turds.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

The wind is diverted by the draughts of his breath,

Rivers are sweet gulps, and the ocean

After a certain distance is too deep for wading.

The earth is trivial, it has the shakes

And must be severely tested, else

It'll crumble into unsteppable clumps and scatter off

Leaving the great beast bellowing among the stars.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

Dwarves have an incredible vicious sincerity,

A persistent will to undo things. The beast cannot grasp

The convolutions of destructqon, always his mind

Turns to other things - the vastness of green

And of frangibility of forest. If only once he could descend

To trivialities he'd sweep the whole earth clean of his tormentors

In one sneeze so mighty as to be observed from Mars.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

Sun and moon are the pieces in a delightfully complex ballgame

That have to do with him...never does he doubt

The sky has opened and rain and thunder descend

For his special ministration. He dreams of mastodons

And mammoths and still his pride beats

Like the heart of the world, he knows he could reach

To the end of space if he stood still and imagined the effort.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

Poems are composed as a silent substitute for laughter,

His thoughts while resting in the shade

Are long and solemn as novels and he knows his companions

By names differing for each quality of morning.

Noon and evening are ruminated on and each overlaid

With the taste of night. He loves his horny perambulating hide

As other tribes love their houses, and remembers

He's left flakes of skin and his smell

As a sign and permanent stamp on wherever he has been.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

The entire Oxford dictionary'ld be too small

To contain all the concepts which after all are too weighty

Each individually ever to be mentioned;

Thus of course the beast has no language

Only an eternal pondering hesitation.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

The pliable trunk's a continuous diversion

That in his great innocence he never thinks of as perverse,

The pieces of the world are handled with such a thrilling

Tenderness that all his hours

Are consummated and exhausted with love.

Not slow to mate every female bull and baby

Is blessed with a gesture grandly gracious and felt lovely

Down to the sensitive great elephant toenails.

 

And when his more urgent pricking member

Stabs him on its horrifying season he becomes

A blundering mass of bewilderment .... No thought

But twenty tons of lust he fishes madly for whales

And spiders for copulation. Sperm falls in great gouts

And the whole forest is sticky, colonies of ants

Are nourished for generations on dried elephant semen.

 

In the elephant's five-pound brain

Death is accorded no belief and old friends

Are continually expected, patience

Is longer than the lives of glaciers and the centuries

Are rattled like toy drums. A life is planned

Like a brushstroke on the canvas of eternity,

And the beginning of a damnation is handled

With great thought as to its middle and its end.

[Guest guest]

>a poem by Milton Acorn:

>

>*The Natural History of Elephants*

 

What a wonderful poem, Andrew. Reminds of this wise old saying:

 

Make no friends with an elephant keeper, if you have no room for an

elephant.

 

~~Saadi of Shraz