If elephants
were as smart as
you maintain,
they’d have authored
poetry.
Jeffrey
Moussaieff Masson
wrote they weep.
Grieve a death
as much as we.
If so,
where are the
poignant
elegies for
their forebears?
Where are their
lamentations
à la Job &
Jeremiah?
I’ve witnessed
the curl of
trunks, a nose
up like a cobra
poised to
strike—
but innocuous in
its stead,
sloshing all the
children
not with venom,
but the spray of
a water
gun. They’re
capable having
fun, and a
memory second to
none. But none
of this is poetry.
It’s not like
they’re lacking
fodder for a
verse. They’ll
leap like a pogo
stick—
whenever there’s
a mouse.
Failing to take
to the
sky with their
mammoth ears—
Dumbo be damned for his lies.
Well before the
donkeys
interloped,
we’d pin tails
on
pachyderms.
Imagine being
supplanted
by a jackass.
They know so
much of
hardship—yet
where is the
sombre ode
bereaving tusks?
Ivory raped for
Liszt’s
piano nocturne?
The elephant’s
call is brass.
It is they who
inspired the
trumpet. The
thunder of their
steps a booming
drum.
I know if I
lost
all the kudos
I’d scrawl a
poem.
If they were as
wise as
Masson claims, a
part of the
brain would not
be hippo-
campus—for their
rival at
the muddy
saloon.
They’d have at
least
put out a
chapbook. Yet there isn’t
even a meagre
limerick, as if
a shimmer
from their tear
ducts
says it all.
Andreas Gripp
June 15, 2026
RF Photograph
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