Hannibal s Elephants

His vision was epitomised by elephants -
their monumental stamina,
their patience and their fortitude
inured to such vicissitudes
as break down hardened warriors.
They trod the ways of ice for him
as if he were their god.

He dreamed of circumventing
the destruction of a future state
by visiting on Rome the premonition
of his city's fate: Carthage, that Queen Dido
first marked out with oxhide thongs so fine
the local mafiosi matched her guile with real estate.
(Little did he realise that his zeal
would bring about that fate…)

Hannibal, consumed by his hereditary hate
for Rome, found solace in his dreams of home
beneath night's murex-tinted cloak.
He had the perspicacity and strategy
to win outright, but sacrificed the trust
of those he conquered to his ire and spite.
Even the elephants no longer recognised
their lord, the man they'd served and borne aloft
through nightmare scenes his dreams had wrought.

Scipio was waiting, and the torment
in the mammals' brains, memories of unrelenting
inhumanity and pain, blinded them to technical
distinctions between friend and foe:
it had become the same cruel game of mortal woe.
History claims the elephants were panicked
by the Roman force, and, run amok against their host,
wreaked havoc upon Hannibal.

Enduring the long exile that ensued for him,
did he reflect that animals are sickened
by the deeds of men; did his cortex
yield the thought that elephant intelligence
is outraged by men's ruthlessness,
and stampedes from such brutal acts?

Carthage, history suggests, was razed
because of Hannibal. The records make
no mention of what lot befell his elephants.