Elegy For Elephants

Between the boughs of a baobab embrace
A grey ghost groans in his wretched resting place:
Blessèd are the bare bones that bore the weight
Of ivory ignorance, greed, and hate.

The solitary procession prepares to pass;
A lonely elephant left for last
Whose Wisdom’s watched the world contract:
Watched bullets ricochet through rainsplash,
Watched the Zambezi run bloody as a body
broke open – bore witness
To every nimble knife gash. Cold
Cruel memory is not difficult to harness:
He unfurls his trunk to cradle bone;
Recalls how they callously cut through the carcass.
Grief is an abscess, putrid and gaping;
the Old Comrade trumpets, tired – an orchestra of aching.

You cannot but marvel at the nature of God’s grace
When David revels in the agony on this Goliath’s face.

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Copyright © May 2017, Lyndsey England