CANTO VII  (continued)

Clearing his trunk, the ELEPHANT remembered
he’d be paid nothing
if he missed his entrance.
Most had forgotten the guide was round
the corner, shrouded in concrete images.

Is the Mahabharata where you find
Ganesh strumming a lyre?
Those are lazy whisperers,
eyes off the ball,
letting the free verse flourish without structure.
Riding the ELEPHANT in Dublin Zoo
is the great Eddie Hobbs,
champion of jet black lacquered hair stylists.
"I am the man
with a long trunk and fierce mouth,
and amused accent that delights
the boys from Ballyfermot,
the girls from Ringsend."

The ELEPHANT nudges Hobbs forward
through his enthusiasm.

"Here, I give you a cypher, a Delphic face.
Out through the orifices come sound bites,
megabites, nanobites."
If Lenihan came to him under the cover of darkness
and sat in kitchen, chewing garlic,
complaining that officials in his Department
smelt of Cologne,
Eddie would have sewn those lips.
"Our great natural resource is wind",
says one soldier.

The ELEPHANT blows his balloon,
swats another flea and wonders
whether he’s too heavy for this poem,
or would have been safer
inside a shit load of sonnets. 

(end of CANTO 7)