Elephant Graveyard Poem by Abraham Sutzkever

Skeletons of ships on the floor of the sea —
Lie elephants with ripped-open bellies,
Where the moon comes to bear her children…

Black rocks all around — tombstones
With silver epitaphs in a wise elephant tongue.

No one brings them here. They walk
One by one through weeping forests,
Months, years, when their time comes to die.

An elephant walks.
His feet — four thumps of thunder —
Drum the dust of his wrinkled years.

But the striped jackal already rides his back.
And, when the elephant calmly chooses his bed —
The jackal will devour his childish eyes,
And the ivory is sawed off
By hunters.