From the Elephant Feast

(Fragment, found on a banana leaf)

We have eaten him entirely,
the Grey One who carried the world
on his slow back.
His heart was heavy as an ancient moon,
his marrow sweet as the forgotten milk
of childhood.

Now his death sits within us,
warm, heavy, unspeakable.
We carry him onward,
as he once carried the savanna�"
silently, without complaint.

The man beside me,
with hands like leather and iron,
laughs quietly into the flames.
He knows:
what we have taken
will never leave us.

And somewhere,
in the depths of the blood,
the elephant lifts his trunk once more
toward the starry sky,
as if to drink
from the great black bowl of the night.

Then he lies down
inside us
and sleeps.