Elephant Eternity (and other elephant poems)

Elephant Eternity


Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees

Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees

Elephants elephants walking like time


Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river

Fountaining their children in the mothery river

 Elephants elephants bathing like happiness


Strong and gentle elephants

Standing on the earth

Strong and gentle elephants

Like peace


Time is walking under elephant trees

 Happiness is bathing in the elephant river

 Strong gentle peace is shining

 All over the elephant earth


Adrian Mitchell

 

Ghost Elephants
In the elephant field tall green ghost elephants with your cargo of summer leaves at night I heard you breathing at the window Don't you ever think I'm not crying since you're away from me Don't ever think I went free At first the goodbye had a lilt to it— maybe just a couple of months— but it was a beheading. Ghost elephant, reach down, cross me over Jean Valentine        The Elephant is slow to mate The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate; he finds a female, they show no haste they wait for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts slowly, slowly to rouse as they loiter along the river-beds and drink and browse and dash in panic through the brake of forest with the herd, and sleep in massive silence, and wake together, without a word. So slowly the great hot elephant hearts grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their fire. Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts so they know at last how to wait for the loneliest of feasts for the full repast. They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive blood moves as the moon-tides, near, more near till they touch in flood. D. H. Lawrence