Nature

‘An elephant carries the world on his back...’

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An elephant carries the world on his back,
He carries it far, he carries it back,
He swings to the left, he swings to the right,
And the ants on the ball call it morning and night.

An elephant carries the world on his back,
When he trumpets the seas and the continents crack,
When he circles the sun on his shadowy wing
The ants on the ball call it winter or spring.

An elephant carries the world on his back,
His tongue is a sunset of ruin and wrack,
When he waggles an ear there is storm or typhoon,
And the ants on the ball think his eye is the moon.

An elephant carries the world on his back,
And once in a while his saddle grows slack,
And sometimes he swallows a star with a sneeze
And the ants on the ball tumble down on their knees.

An elephant carries the world on his back,
He carries it far, he carries it back,
His trunk is the source of the rain and the mist—
But the ants on the ball say he doesn’t exist!

Dedicated with amused affection to religious Creationists and their new acolytes, the high priests of so-called ‘Intelligent Design’— which, in its turn, of course, is the old ‘Eternal Watchmaker’ theory, brought bang up to date in the sheep’s clothing of junk science.