We know of no ancient elephant rituals.
If elephants ever spoke English over time they have forgotten how.
Now when they pronounce vowels their trunks blow only trumpets.
If elephants ever held funerals to mourn for fallen elephants
they glazed no terra cotta anything to mark the sacred occasion.
Elephants wrote no Bibles.
Elephants carved no grief in stone.
Even if some lucky elephant somehow had had access to an ancient camera
his thumbs would have been too calloused to click the dials into position
and his hooves would have smudged the lenses.
Who knows?
Maybe boisterous dancing festivals once rang in springtide each spring.
Then the elders called it sinful and the elephants stopped dancing.
Elephants wove no dancing wisdom into the plotline of a folktale.
Elephants pressed no elephant-thumping into the grooves of a primitive poem.
They just smacked their hairy lips against their long and muscular noses
and the steps were soon forgotten.
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Chalk drawing by Franz Marc, 1907