A Renaissance-era fresco attributed to Jacopo Ripanda depicting Hannibal on the back of an elephant during the Second Punic War, in the third century B.C. Credit… Adam Eastland/Alamy. [New York Times caption and illustration]
ELEPHANTS ARE EMINENTLY SENTIENT
Of course they are, you ninny. So is an
Amoeba in its way. But these big beasts
In magnitude are titans of sweetness;
Matriarchal, family prone, pacific,
Communicative browsing herbivores.
Pressed upon a time into the misery
Of cock-besotted, bipedal mammalians,
Elephants were frogmarched to a bitch
Of a wreck by a puny Punic horde,
Martyred on the cross of a mountain.
Well rest you, tusk-shorn Surus, last to fall!
Where justice reigned, God were a Pachyderm
Enthroned up yonder, trumpeting on high,
Mounted on a hellion known as Hannibal,
Riding eternally the bastard in the sky.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
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