[New-Poetry] An Elephant Poem

[JforJames at aol.com]

Rossetti’s Elephant
 
     The British painter and poet Dante Gabriel  Rossetti (1828-82) 
      announced that he wanted to buy an  elephant.   
      When his friends asked what that could be  good for, he said,
"So  I can teach it to wash the windows of my  house."
When they still seemed  puzzled, he added,
"Then  everyone would stare and say, 'That elephant 
            is  washing the windows of the house in which lives 
            Dante  Gabriel Rossetti, the famous artist."
 
At first the elephant stood steadfast and confused,
They handed him the  sponge to grasp
instead of using it to scrub his hide of the dirt
and  vermin. They prodded him with sharp 
bamboo sticks, forced him to hold the  sponge aloft, 
to make circular motions with his trunk, 
first in air, and  then over glass. Of course he broke 
some panes along the way, But he was the  kind 
of beast that took to training, and in a week or so 
he was dipping  and sopping, raising and washing
each window in its turn. And people 
did  come by. 
                    People  loved to see
him trampling the shrubbery, absolutely 
obviously, or would  gasp and feign dismay 
when he relieved himself copiously on the front  lawn.
Sometimes he would press a large eye 
against the glass. Nothing to  eat…Persian carpets
and ornate furnishings, walls hung with paintings.
 
When Rossetti died the contents auctioned off,
and the elephant sold to  a circus in Leeds. 
For years afterwards people called it 
The Elephant’s  House. It was remarked 
that it had 22 bright windows and 18 times 
that  number in facets of glittering panes, 
but only an oak tree now to cast a  shadow upon it. 





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