Petition: Send elephants away
We placed a tusk in a zoo that Franklin founded.
And round it was, upon a beastalone,
in cold stone climate
We made the scattered cityscape
surround that tusk. The city rose up to it.
Grey beast, stone city;
our elephant's in the closet.
Send elephants away!
give way to gray.
the tusk was round upon that crown
and palpable of air as Franklin said.
Their small sere ears crisped in cold
palpable of skin as Franklin said.
Ye men, don't take dominion everywhere.
Tusks, shuck the wire-fence shackles,
skip the skyline crown that loves so brotherly
the crown was gray and bare
it wanted so of bird and bush majestic, and
lush, like nothing that was hush.
O monstrous mysterious
let our grey sages spill from
zoo like so many ripples that
scatter, reunite
and scatter again.
Moira Moody is a senior in English at the University of Pennsylvania and a sound technician at the Kelly Writers House.
"Petition: Send elephants away" appeared in the Inquirer on Wednesday, December 28, 2005.