Liebestraum, or If Babar was a Bard

If elephants were as smart as

you maintain, they’d have authored

poetry.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

wrote they weep. Grieve a death

as much as we. If so,

where are the poignant

elegies for their forebears?

Where are their lamentations

à la Job & Jeremiah?

I’ve witnessed the curl of

trunks, a nose up like a cobra

poised to strike—

but innocuous in its stead,

sloshing all the children

not with venom,

but the spray of a water

gun. They’re capable of having

fun, and a memory second to

none. But none of this is poetry.

It’s not like they’re lacking

fodder for a verse. They'll

leap like a pogo stick—

whenever there’s a mouse.

Failing to take to the

sky with their mammoth ears—

Dumbo be damned for his lies.

Well before the donkeys

interloped,

we'd pin tails on

pachyderms.

Imagine being supplanted

by a jackass.

They know so much of

hardship—yet where is the

sombre ode

bereaving tusks?

Ivory raped for Liszt’s

piano nocturne?

The elephant’s call is brass.

It is they who inspired the

trumpet. The thunder of their

steps a booming drum.

I know if I  lost all the kudos

I’d scrawl a poem.

If they were as wise as

Masson claims, a part of the

brain would not be hippo-

campus—for their rival at

the muddy saloon.

They’d have at least

put out a chapbook. Yet there isn’t

even a meagre

limerick, as if a shimmer

from their tear ducts

says it all.

Andreas Gripp

June 15, 2026

RF Photograph