African Elephant Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

African Elephant
To the small German town came the circus and it
had amongst many animals also an old elephant.
One morning it broke loose and took to the woods
where it met a man of seventy-five out early to
pick wild flowers for his wife, the elephant charged
killed him, to make matters worse ate the flowers.
Death comes in many forms, but this was a surprise.
The animal was shot, where could it possibly hide
a tiny forest bordering a little town and a motorway.
The keeper of the elephant cried too they had been
together for twenty years and could not understand
why his trusted friend had gone mad.