The Ivory Plague
Everything I possessed
Paid over tenfold
By suffering.
Tusks bundled together,
Wrapped in rope.
They trembled in my hand,
Clicking like teeth.
A good haul that day
The three of us agreed.
Television, sofa, coffee table.
Crimson blood darkens it all
And suffocates my atonement.
They cried out sometimes.
When a bullet went astray
And shattered their bones.
We made sure
They stopped by
Putting a bullet between their eyes.
Insomnia weighs on me
Like the collective weight of the elephants,
All stacked high.
We dealt it
With knowledge gleamed from
Crumbling copies of
Business textbooks.
I helped count, weigh and
Wash ivory tusks.
One night,
Three wraps at my apartment door.
‘Polisie!’
That was the one.
Buyers in Jiangxi.
Yuen into Rand.
The intricacies of foreign exchange.
We were rich in a blink,
And we split it three ways.
Scumbag. Wretch.
Poacher.
I hear it all through iron bars.
Their cries would haunt me,
I knew. Even as I listened
They echoed in my future
Through a senile mind
Confined to a wheelchair
In a nursing home.
Behind concrete walls
Prisoners beat me
And steal me.
As I yanked out a prize tusk
I thought of the elephants.
Carcasses scattered
Across savannahs,
Plagued by their ivory,
Doomed by their beauty.
Help stop the ivory trade. Donate, sign petitions, do anything you can. Your efforts — no matter how small — will contribute to ending atrocities against elephants.
