Elephant (Animals) by D.H. Lawrence

You go down shade to the river, where naked men sit on flat brown rocks, to / watch the ferry, in the sun; / And you cross the ferry with the naked people, go up the tropical lane / Through the palm-trees and past hollow paddy-fields where naked men are / threshing rice / And the monolithic water-buffaloes, like old, muddy stones with hair on / them, are being idle; / And through the shadow of bread-fruit trees, with their dark green, glossy, / fanged leaves / Very handsome, and some pure yellow fanged leaves; / Out into the open, where the path runs on the top of a dyke between paddy-fields: / And there, of course, you meet a huge and mud-grey elephant advancing his / frontal bone, his trunk curled round a log of wood: / So you step down the bank, to make way.

Shuffle, shuffle, and his little wicked eye has seen you as he advances / above you, / The slow beast curiously spreading his round feet for the dust. / And the slim naked man slips down, and the beast deposits the lump of wood, / carefully. / The keeper hooks the vast knee, the creature salaams.