from ELK
Rahul Santhanam
[Redux]
The first elk was a clown.
The second elk was a swan.
The third elk was a myriad of chiliads.
The fourth elk was a myrmidon.
The fifth elk was various.
The sixth elk had inanition of the soul. He consulted Reinhold Niebuhr. The eminent theologian recommended love as a tonic.
The seventh elk was a litany of longings. (Including the longing for litany.)
The eighth elk was a haruspex.
The ninth elk was a sundial smeared with dust.
The tenth elk had body dysmorphia.
The eleventh elk was a stunner. She had body dysmorphia.
The twelfth elk tied himself up in knots.
The thirteenth elk liked calisthenics.
The fourteenth elk had onanistic tendencies.
The fifteenth elk craved a quiet spot in the sun.
The sixteenth elk roved in the shadows, far away from the fifteenth elk.
The seventeenth elk was a fount of relation.
The eighteenth elk was afflicted by lassitude.
The nineteenth elk climbed a ladder in her dreams.
The twentieth elk was a Trappist elk. Kept his trap shut.
The twenty-first elk was a love doctor.
The twenty-second elk lay silent in the sun.
The twenty-third elk was made of sandalwood.
The twenty-fourth elk was made of mud.
The twenty-fifth elk had a bleeding lip.
The twenty-sixth elk spilled his guts out.
The twenty-seventh elk was immortal.
They tethered the elk to the post.
They brought the knife to the elk. The elk saw the knife with its own eyes, saw how it was a knife of light. And then the scene dissolved, and the elk was not there. When the elk awoke, everything was fine. Everything.
The elk imagined that it had been disassembled into a million million elk atoms. Then it was re-assembled.
The elk imagined things.
Poems were the ghosts of what the elk desired.
The elk was apprehension.
The elk was happenstance.
The elk was misery with a human face.
The elk was murderous love.
The elk was veneer of thought.
The elk was dust.
The elk was incarnate.
The elk was married.
The elk was free.
The elk was the color of mud.
The elk wore a head.
The elk had roots.
The elk was relaxed, bourgeois and happy.
The elk kicked out.
The elk had a head like a cloud.
The elk was obscure.
The elk lived deep down. Deep
A whelk telephoned you? Not a whelk, an elk, an elk telephoned you? What did the elk say? The elk said nothing? Why did the elk say nothing? You don't know? Why did the elk telephone? You can't say? How did you know it was an elk? By the silence at the other end? The characteristic dignity and silence of the elk?
The elk was an absence,
then a presence,
then an absence,
an absence
evermore.
The elk was immortal.
The elk had feelings.
The elk had limbs.
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The elk does not have wings.
The elk has no purpose.
This proves that the elk occurs as it is.
This proves that the elk is part of Nature.
But the elk is not natural.
Let us not be satisfied with the natural.
The natural is merely the ingrowing toe-nail of the imagination.
(But what do elk have to do with that?)
(Is there an elk with an ingrowing toenail?)
(I do not know.)
There are things about the elk I do not know.
The elk knows nothing about me.
I am secretive.
The elk, too, is secretive…
The elk belongs to us all:
The head to North America,
the brain to science,
the eyes to us all,
the limbs to the boys,
the skin to the tailors,
the ears to the music-makers,
the horns to the dead,
the tail to a straggler, and
the heart to me.