The Humility of Elephants

The humility of elephants – a wonder to see.
They knelt like to prayer beside the river
and lowered the travellers off their backs.
Like mobile mountains of grey leather
knelt among reeds and smashed growth
beside the long wide waters – waters
of a silver river going on purple evening.
The humility of elephants – a wonder to see.
 
Lowered to a flat boat by elephants,
gentle as strong, big, big as houses
then gone back into the all-day-twilight of jungle.
Debouched into another dream the travellers,
skiffed by silent oarsmen – swiftly, swiftly
downriver ever nearer star-weeping sky.
 
Night sky hallmarked by a polished moon.
River, a great sheet of music unrolled
between banks of monkey-startled trees.
Music scribed on plucked waters accented
by stars – lyric of experience for them,
a journey for travellers like a going
beyond life or death, returning home
to some place of solace, pristine
and forgotten but still there. Or here,
in the heart’s endlessly syllabled river
where words are stones dredged up
by watery rhythms, rhythms of light.
 
All started by the humility of elephants –
a wonder to see for those travellers.

William Oxley

in collection, Namaste: Poems of Nepal, 2004, Hearing Eye,
ISBN 1-870841-98-0