In elephants and the east are two devils, in all men maybe.
The mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in homage, in lust, in rage,
And passive with everlasting patience,
Then the little, cunning pig-devil of the elephant’s lurking eyes, the unbeliever.
We dodged, when the Pera-hera was finished, under the hanging, hairy pigs’ tails
And the flat, flaccid mountains of the elephants’ standing haunches,
Vast-blooded beasts,
Myself so little dodging rather scared against the eternal wrinkled pillars of their legs, as they were being dismantled;
Then I knew they were dejected, having come to hear the repeated
Royal summons: Dient Ihr!
Serve!
Serve, vast mountainous blood, in submission and splendour, serve royalty.
Instead of which, the silent, fatal emission from that pale, shattered boy up there:
Ich dien.
That’s why the night fell in frustration.
That’s why, as the elephants ponderously, with unseeming swiftness, galloped uphill in the night, going back to the jungle villages,
As the elephant bells sounded tong-tong-tong, bell of the temple of blood in the night, swift-striking,
And the crowd like a field of rice in the dark gave way like liquid to the dark
Looming gallop of the beasts,
It was as if the great bare bulks of elephants in the obscure light went over the hill-brow swiftly, with their tails between their legs, in haste to get away,
Their bells sounding frustrate and sinister.
And all the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, more numerous and whispering than grains of rice in a ricefield at night,
All the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, a countless host on the shores of the lake, like thick wild rice by the water’s edge,
Waiting for the fireworks of the after-show,
As the rockets went up, and the glare passed over countless faces, dark as black rice growing,
Showing a glint of teeth, and glancing tropical eyes aroused in the night,
There was the faintest twist of mockery in every face, across the hiss of wonders as the rocket burst
High, high up, in flakes, shimmering flakes of blue fire, above the palm-trees of the islet in the lake,
O faces upturned to the glare, O tropical wonder, wonder, a miracle in heaven!
And the shadow of a jeer, of underneath disappointment, as the rocket-coruscation died, and shadow was the same as before.
They were foiled, the myriad whispering dark-faced cotton-wrapped people.
They had come to see royalty,
To bow before royalty, in the land of elephants, bow deep, bow deep.
Bow deep, for it’s good as a draught of cool water to bow very, very low to the royal.
And all there was to bow to, a weary, diffident boy whose motto is Ich dien.
I serve! I serve! in all the weary iron of his mien—’Tis I who serve!
Drudge to the public.
I wish they had given the three feathers to me;
That I had been he in the pavilion, as in a pepper-box aloft and alone
To stand and hold feathers, three feathers above the world,
And say to them: Dient Ihr! Dient!
Omnes, vos omnes, servite.
Serve me, I am meet to be served.
Being royal of the gods.
And to the elephants:
First great beasts of the earth
A prince has come back to you,
Blood-mountains.
Crook the knee and be glad.
Kandy.
KANGAROO
In the northern hemisphere
Life seems to leap at the air, or skim under the wind
Like stags on rocky ground, or pawing horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.