The Elephants
By Leconte de Lisle
The red sand is like an endless sea,
Blazing, wordless, slumped in its bed.
Unmoving waves stretch along
The horizon with its coppery fumes, man’s dwelling.
No life nor sound. All the fed lions
Are sleeping deep in their dens a hundred leagues hence,
And the giraffe drinks from the blue springs,
Yonder, beneath the date-palms which the panthers know.
No bird goes by, beating with its wing
The dense air through which an immense sun goes round.
At times some boa, warmed in its sleep,
Ripples its back with glittering scales.
Likewise the kindled expanse burns beneath the unclouded heavens.
But, whilst everything slumbers in the cheerless emptiness,
The rugged elephants, those slow and clumsy travellers,
Cross the deserts to the country of their birth.
From a spot on the horizon, like brown lumps,
They come, throwing up the dust, and one can see that,
So as not to stray from the straightest path,
They make the distant dunes slip down under their broad and firm feet.
He who leads the way is an old chieftain. His body
Is covered with cracks like a tree-trunk gnawed and consumed by the weather.
His head is like rock, and the curve of his spine
Arches powerfully with his slightest effort.
Never slowing and not halting his march,
He guides his dusty companions to the certain goal;
And, leaving a ploughed sandy furrow behind them,
The enormous pilgrims follow their patriarch.
With ears spread like fans, their trunks between their teeth,
They make their way with eyes closed. Their bellies throb and steam,
And their sweat rises in the flaming air like a mist;
And a thousand glowing insects hum all around.
What do theycare for thirst and the consuming fly,
And the sun baking their black and wrinkled skin?
They march on dreaming of the forsaken land,
Of the forests of sycamore-figs where their breed sheltered.
They will see again the river broken forth from the great heights,
Where the huge hippopotamus swims along bellowing,
Where, turned white by the moonlight and casting forward their shadows,
They would crush the reeds going down to drink.
Also, full of courage and deliberation, they pass on
Like a black line, in the endless sands;
And the desert resumes its stillness,
As the ponderous travellers fade on the horizon.
