This week, I smiled when I heard on the news that the zoo in Dublin, Ireland, has found a novel way to cool its elephants: with giant ice lollies!

‘Nature’s great masterpiece’ – that is how John Donne described the elephant. A perfect description, don’t you think? Ever since I first saw this beautiful creature, I have been in love with it. As the French poet Paul Éluard put it, ‘Elephants are contagious’.

The first time I stood before an elephant, as a young girl on the trip to Kenya, I was absolutely awestruck by this majestic and mighty beast, and humbled by it. Though I knew it was dangerous, it did not frighten me; I was mesmerised by its slow, calm pace and the wisdom it seemed to emanate. I imagined it looking down on me with a wealth of knowledge in its eyes.

Years later, that trip to Kenya would inspire my debut novel, Burning Embers, in which I would write of the wilds of Kenya where elephants roamed free. And for that novel, I drew upon another of my inspirations, the poetry of Leconte De Lisle (1818–1894).

He was born in La Reunion, a beautiful French island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, and while he settled in Paris, he dedicated his life to writing poems inspired by his homeland. (Readers of my latest novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, may be interested to learn that he was the leader of the Parnassian literary movement, characterised by writing about classical and exotic subjects in a highly descriptive and impassive manner, and that movement was named for three volumes of verse published as Le Parnasse contemporain, whose title was inspired by the home of the Muses in Greek mythology: Mount Parnassus.)

The following poem is one of my favourites by Leconte De Lisle. I hope you enjoy it too and that it transports you to the African plains.

The Elephants

The red sand is like an endless sea,

Blazing, wordless, slumped in its bed.

Unmoving waves stretch along

The horizon with its coppery fumes, man’s dwelling.

No life nor sound.  All the fed lions

Are sleeping deep in their dens a hundred leagues hence,

And the giraffe drinks from the blue springs,

Yonder, beneath the date-palms which the panthers know.

No bird goes by, beating with its wing

The dense air through which an immense sun goes round.

At times some boa, warmed in its sleep,

Ripples its back with glittering scales.

Likewise the kindled expanse burns beneath the unclouded heavens.

But, whilst everything slumbers in the cheerless emptiness,

The rugged elephants, those slow and clumsy travellers,

Cross the deserts to the country of their birth.

From a spot on the horizon, like brown lumps,

They come, throwing up the dust, and one can see that,

So as not to stray from the straightest path,

They make the distant dunes slip down under their broad and firm feet.

He who leads the way is an old chieftain.  His body

Is covered with cracks like a tree-trunk gnawed and consumed by the weather.

His head is like rock, and the curve of his spine

Arches powerfully with his slightest effort.

Never slowing and not halting his march,

He guides his dusty companions to the certain goal;

And, leaving a ploughed sandy furrow behind them,

The enormous pilgrims follow their patriarch.

With ears spread like fans, their trunks between their teeth,

They make their way with eyes closed.  Their bellies throb and steam,

And their sweat rises in the flaming air like a mist;

And a thousand glowing insects hum all around.

What do they care for thirst and the consuming fly,

And the sun baking their black and wrinkled skin?

They march on dreaming of the forsaken land,

Of the forests of sycamore-figs where their breed sheltered.

They will see again the river broken forth from the great heights,

Where the huge hippopotamus swims along bellowing,

Where, turned white by the moonlight and casting forward their shadows,

They would crush the reeds going down to drink.

Also, full of courage and deliberation, they pass on

Like a black line, in the endless sands;

And the desert resumes its stillness,

As the ponderous travellers fade on the horizon.

Les éléphants

Le sable rouge est comme une mer sans limite,
Et qui flambe, muette, affaissée en son lit.
Une ondulation immobile remplit
L’horizon aux vapeurs de cuivre où l’homme habite.

Nulle vie et nul bruit. Tous les lions repus
Dorment au fond de l’antre éloigné de cent lieues,
Et la girafe boit dans les fontaines bleues,
Là-bas, sous les dattiers des panthères connus.

Pas un oiseau ne passe en fouettant de son aile
L’air épais, où circule un immense soleil.
Parfois quelque boa, chauffé dans son sommeil,
Fait onduler son dos dont l’écaille étincelle.

Tel l’espace enflammé brûle sous les cieux clairs.
Mais, tandis que tout dort aux mornes solitudes,
Lés éléphants rugueux, voyageurs lents et rudes
Vont au pays natal à travers les déserts.

D’un point de l’horizon, comme des masses brunes,
Ils viennent, soulevant la poussière, et l’on voit,
Pour ne point dévier du chemin le plus droit,
Sous leur pied large et sûr crouler au loin les dunes.

Celui qui tient la tête est un vieux chef. Son corps
Est gercé comme un tronc que le temps ronge et mine
Sa tête est comme un roc, et l’arc de son échine
Se voûte puissamment à ses moindres efforts.

Sans ralentir jamais et sans hâter sa marche,
Il guide au but certain ses compagnons poudreux;
Et, creusant par derrière un sillon sablonneux,
Les pèlerins massifs suivent leur patriarche.

L’oreille en éventail, la trompe entre les dents,
Ils cheminent, l’oeil clos. Leur ventre bat et fume,
Et leur sueur dans l’air embrasé monte en brume;
Et bourdonnent autour mille insectes ardents.

Mais qu’importent la soif et la mouche vorace,
Et le soleil cuisant leur dos noir et plissé?
Ils rêvent en marchant du pays délaissé,
Des forêts de figuiers où s’abrita leur race.

Ils reverront le fleuve échappé des grands monts,
Où nage en mugissant l’hippopotame énorme,
Où, blanchis par la Lune et projetant leur forme,
Ils descendaient pour boire en écrasant les joncs.

Aussi, pleins de courage et de lenteur, ils passent
Comme une ligne noire, au sable illimité;
Et le désert reprend son immobilité
Quand les lourds voyageurs à l’horizon s’effacent.