Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

Municipal

IT was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,

I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;

When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,

A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn’t see the driver, and across my mind it rushed

That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.

I didn’t care to meet him, and I couldn’t well get down,

So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,

Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;

And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals,

And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear,

To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear—

Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,

Felt the brute’s proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

Heard it trumpet on my shoulder—tried to crawl a little higher—

Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire;

And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze,

While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey

Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.

Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.

They flushed that four-foot drain-head and—it never choked again!

You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,

Till you’ve been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.

I believe in well-flushed culverts….
This is why the death-rate’s small;

And, if you don’t believe me, get shikarred yourself. That’s all.