The City, with Elephants

The elephants of reckoning are bunches of scruff men and women picking up thrown out antennae from the rubbish bins of the city to fix on their tubular bells and horn about by oil can fires in the freezing midnight of the old new year We ride by their music every hour in cabs on trains hearing the pit pat of our grown-wise pulse shut in shut out from the animals of the dry season the losers and boozers, we must not admit our eyes into the courtyard the whimsy of chance and our other excuses— dollars in pocket— to write beautiful songs is all I ask, God to do right with friends and love a woman and live to eighty have people listen to the story of my trip to America The elephants of reckoning are beaten and hungry and walk their solitary horrors out every sunrise slurping coffee bought with change while in some houses freedom-bound lovers embrace late and read Tagore about the people working underneath the falling of empires.