When I was small, I saw the circus elephants on Blackpool sands; a slow line of extraordinary sadness. An elephant holds more anguish than a man. We should not see them, except where they choose to be, in their grey empathies, their bulked knowledge. They walk on song; gravity’s grave clergy. They are perfect for the earth, its emigrant distances, its pooled waters. If the gods were to gaze at this world, they would hazard elephants.