A poem by Thomas Thornburg from Ancient Letters

BUBBLES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, led
to believe her concrete block demesne
surrounded by barker and cagéd cat
was of her natural habitat
unchanging and forever green,
is dead.  Beloved, she fell asleep,
o.d.’ed like a teen-ager in the park
she slipped into the surrounding darkness
deaf to the midway midgets’ weeping,
the sorrow of keepers who could not keep her,
the curses of grunts consigned to inter her
(there being no Conradian cannibals here).

ET IN ARCADIA ZOOELLA
the elephant fell into a funk
and lay for three little days of fever prostrate;
toward the end she could not lift her trunk.
O pachydermal poem of pity,
sad is Eros builder of cities
(the autopsy performed at Michigan State).

AND FALLEN VICTOR, the giraffe,
unhappy lover, bent on gaffing,
like Nisus on the ringing plain
went cheerless down; by no amount of talking
could Victor be brought up again.
O O O, this slippery world we walk on.

AND WHAT OF COOKIE THE CROCODILE?
in the eye of noon and Miami’s humming
heat where David Mark sat drumming
Cellinied heels the voice of judgment spoke:
croc comes, boy slips and falls and
th-th-that’s all, folks!
P. S. astounded keepers came
and pumped nine slugs in Cookie’s brain,
quit-claimed their guilt throughout the town,
and shut that goddam garden down.