don’t wear white trousers
Posted in Poetry | By tim |
written for my sister when she went away to be an elephant keeper
They said I’d be working with elephants
“They’re only babies and terribly cute”
If they knew what I found when I first arrived
They’d probably be forced to refute
Because elephants are bloody massive
Regardless of how young they are
And getting into their enclosure at first
It was clear that I’d just gone too far
The elephants eyed me up and down
And one gave a deep throaty roar
Then it came at me with its nostrils flared
And my stomach sank to the floor
I was wearing these bright white trousers you see
which I’d brought to go out on the town
It was clear that by the end of my first day here
These pants would be coloured-in brown
Well after my first disaster
I resigned myself to lesser tasks
Than confronting great big elephants
On their own patches of grass
When they told me I’d be looking after
the babies and their huge mothers too
I thought I’d be training them to cope in the wild
Not given mucking-out duties to do
But as it turns out that’s just what I did -
Spending hours knee deep in their dung
And I learnt that shovelling, sweeping and cleaning
was actually a lot more fun
So I threw out my supposedly clean white trousers
And my silly Western vanity too
And I put on a pair of the dirtiest shorts I could find
And got used to walking round in poo
They say there is an old wive’s tale
That elephants are terribly wise
Well remember this, young Vicky:
Your Sri Lankan experience never dies
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