In my rudyard-kipling-simple years I read

Of mid-jungle where the elephants go to die.

Old bulls know, and rather than death by herd,

Wait alone, and add to the fabulous ivory.

My uncle had a wiry chicken-yard, and told

Me in my chicken-childish time that one,

Bleeding or sick, would be pecked and killed

By hens terrified silly of the different hen.

Into the big ears of children wisdom goes,

Out of the mouths of grown-up men it comes-

The hencoop-jungle myths turned into laws

For one another, and given longer names.

Man's in his second childhood now. He'll take

As gospel anything barnyard-rudyard speaks.

What flurry of feathers and hysterical squawk

All around me, and deadly incessant beaks,

The sick healing the sick with the sickness.

The last of hens will peck at itself, cluck,

Flop in the gravel, and die of uniqueness.

The thrifty elephant saves even his neck.

A health of dying. An anguish without rant.

Who's seen an old bull elephant lately, old

Red-eyed, foot-dragging, single-minded blunt-

Tusk, lugging his bones to the bones piled?