The Elephant

The Elephant

by Dan Chiasson

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel

          that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.

Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion,

          once I was not the elephant I find I am.

My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched

          trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was

somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness

          and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me

to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it

          in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind

I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man

          of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers   

breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments

          with balance, the high-wire act and cones.

We elephants are images of humility, as when we

          undertake our melancholy migrations to die.

Did you know, though, that elephants were taught

          to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves?

Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs,

          tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer.

That's not humility you see on our long final journeys:

          it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.