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The first draft of this poem was written the day before a magnetic imaging scan of the brain, a regular event in the life of a brain cancer survivor during the first few years after remission. The result of such a test will be either good news or bad news. If bad news, death news.
THE IMMORTAL ELEPHANT death poem in Genghis Lotus Poetry Collection, a selection of poems free to read online. The Genghis Lotus poems are hosted at two locations, genghislotus.com and zenvirus.com/genghis-lotus/. Webmaster for both sites is poet Hugh Cook, born in Britain, educated in New Zealand, and the author of, amongst other works, the fantasy series Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. |
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Like the stuff going green in the refrigerator, I am not going to be around forever. The immortal elephant, by contrast, Will outlast the icecaps. Israel will persist, And the history of origami will continue, But my personal need for electricity will cease. My daughter, I believe, Will live beyond me, My name a signature still active in the scrolls of time, But I will be gone before this building in which I dwell Descends to scrapyards. The elephant, by contrast, will endure. In the long event of time, the immortal elephant Will forget the loss of the forgetting of my name. In time, My surcease will be an unremembered gravy Which the porcelain bones of the universe Shrugged off in discards a billion years ago. By then, My tongue will be oblivious to honey, My teeth will be oblivious to pain. This termination May be sooner than I think. In the realms of the big machines The humming light Will take dictation from the waiting future. Whatever the result tomorrow brings I know My calendar has a limit to its years. My dry ice life will deliquesce and vanish, Leaving my domain names to expire. My daughter, if I die before the spring, Will see me perish while she is only two. One day, perhaps, to find the moon she asks for, The literal moon she asks for from the sky, The actual moon she asks for, all expectation, The moon that I can see but cannot reach, Though I would hand it down from heaven If I could. |
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May be photocopied for classroom use |
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