“Our elders say that an elephant does not find its own trunk heavy.”

“Visitors at the zoo indulge in transports of delight at the way an elephant reaches for an apple with it's trunk....but give not a moments thought to the ineffable capabilities of their own hands.”

“...there is a delicacy in it equalled only by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk.”

“Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys.”

“She says, "But in contentment I still feelThe need for imperishable bliss."Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires.Is there no change of death in paradise?Does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughsHang always heavy in that perfect sky,Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,With rivers like our own that seek for seasThey never find, the same receding shoresThat never touch with inarticulate pang?”

“Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.”