Dirty business

You really can’t get
much more dirty
The mahouts are
so called kindly men
Who supposedly live
for the elephants
Under their charge
So when
Did all this kindly
stuff change
and Wickedness creep into
their care
Taking the wild ones
and actually thinking
To torture them really was fair

Taking a socially active
Herd creature
living then who
Loved family life
and respected the matriarch
And thinking it was right that you
Captured these elephants
took them away
From their families their life
And thought it could pay
That phajaan a series of tortures would be
Acceptable somehow
And so we did see

So many babies taken away
Subjected to torture
Destroyed all their play
Nobody to teach them
Just man who would say
Let’s put them through torture
Let pain be the way

And so it was born
Man in kind began to
Work out contraptions
That threatened to do
The dirty on elephants
Introduce fear
Pain And get them all distraught
Which was clear

Even as big as they are
What they feel
Is they don’t become rebels
or warriors Real
Their memories lengthen
And they tend to be
restrained and just broken in
And then angrily

Harbour resentment
It affects what they do
And at some stage they break
and then what does ensue
Like “Tyke“ long before
Frustration and pain
It gets into their head
With so much more strain

Abuse is a bad thing
And elephants will
Crack some time after
And possibly kill

To live with abuse
Can produce
Militancy
A clarion call
And hostility
Something can snap in them
A battle royal
That is when something happens
And their brain starts to boil

For years yes submissively
Acquiesce they
Surrender themselves
Work like hell for no pay
Then something clicks
And all hell breaks out and they
Go after someone or just run aWay

We being men take advantage
We feel
We have the right
And they then conceal
Their actual motive
For a being supine
And when they break rank
They are like a land mine

In all directions
Their anger directed
If you are close
Perhaps you elected
To ride on their backs
Or show a bull hook
And that was the last straw
Perhaps your last look

And they then are shot
Another soul lost
We torture we threaten
And that is the cost

Of our selfish misunderstanding of being wild