A Vietnamese smuggler caught trying to leave Kenya with Ivory bound for Bangkok

Let’s apologize to the elephants
and to those souls who have died
cut down by a blistering ring of bullets
that denied
a family, their inheritance
because of ivory
and now in Kenya at the airport
a Vietnamese we see

with almost 500 bangles
his contraband of blood
of inheritance and
of futures
behold there is a flood

of tears from all the elephants
and from this, old poet too
who feels the loss
and who knows the cost
in the suitcase now on view

488 bangles
new ivory, clearly
they have abused
the future
and tried apparently

to disguise the fact
by painting them
hoping to succeed
by saying they
were soapstone
but soapstone
doesn’t bleed

that trail of blood
it stretches
from the scene of carnage to
that case
the evil and depravity
of the human race

to brutalize the elephants
for financial gain
let’s apologize to all of them
now under so much strain