Then the mahout nudged the elephant over the flags <br />Wet and slippy with dung and trampled leaves <br />This animal carriage, painted with stars and moons <br />Flapped her enormous ears and curled her trunk <br />Up like her turbanned master's relentless grin <br /> <br />Dripping with rain, white knuckles gripped the howdah. <br />Behind the mahout's head with its crimson bandage <br />His white suit, almost clean, <br />From the sky's trap door the monsoon falls in sheets. <br />A frenzy of hawkers dog the elephant's sway <br />Puppets, madam, the cheapest in Jaipur! <br />My name is Tony, I take your photo: <br />Click! Bangles? Earrings? Fit for a Maharani! <br /> <br />Spooked by hustlers, hawkers snapping round like wolves <br />Leaping, waving trinkets of wood or leather <br />Tourists are tills, the hagglers smell our money <br />We count our notes, <br />Penned in the rank howdah <br />Foreign currency making a fraught exchange<br /><br />sheena blackhall<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/elephant-ride-jaipur/
