Finding Milton

In the elephant's five-pound brain The wind is diverted by the draughts of his breath, Rivers are sweet gulps, and the ocean After a certain distance is too deep for wading. The earth is trivial, it has the shakes And must be severely tested, else It'll crumble into unsteppable clumps and scatter off Leaving the great beast bellowing among the stars. In the elephant's five-pound brain Dwarves have an incredible vicious sincerity, A persistent will to undo things. The beast cannot grasp The convulsions of destruction, always his mind Turns to other things - the vastness of green And of frangibility of forest. If only once he could descend To trivialities he'd sweep the whole earth clean of his tormentors In one sneeze so mighty as to be observed from Mars. In the elephant's five-pound brain Sun and moon are the pieces in a delightfully complex ballgame That have to do with him...never does he doubt The sky has opened and rain and thunder descend For his special ministration. [coughing] He dreams of mastodons And mammoths and still his pride beats Like the heart of the world, he knows he could reach To the end of space if he stood still and imagined the effort. In the elephant's five-pound brain Poems are composed as a silent substitute for laughter, His thoughts while resting in the shade Are long and solemn as novels and he knows his companions By names differing for each quality of morning. [sirens] Noon and evening are ruminated on and each overlaid With the taste of night. He loves his *** perambulating hide As other tribes love their houses, and remembers He's left flakes of skin and his smell As a sign and permanent stamp on wherever he has been. In the elephant's five-pound brain The entire Oxford dictionary'd be too small To contain all the concepts which after all are too weighty Each individually ever to be mentioned; Thus of course the beast has no language Only an eternal pondering hesitation. In the elephant's five-pound brain Death is accorded no belief and old friends Are continually expected, patience Is longer than the lives of glaciers and the centuries Are rattled like toy drums. A life is planned Like a brushstroke on the canvas of eternity, And the beginning of a damnation is handled With great thought as to its middle and its end. [applause]