Three-toed, half-blind ungulate
with hide thick as the next one,
those square lips are set in continual
ill-temper as if the savannah
owes him a living in all seasons.
Tell him life’s not like that
and he’ll take it as insult,
pound the earth with his bald stumps
of legs, snort, bellow, grunt
and squeak. What evolution means here
who can say? Only to teach beauty
by its grey-horned absence.
