Les Murray: Beasts of the City

Beasts of the City

Pioneers

shot their dinners and their fears

gentry were red in stag and boar

shooting hippo for the roar

turning tall giraffe to rissoles

shredding buffalo with missiles

but as true wilderness prey ran down

the hunt went sour, and in town

people talked rarity and compassion

as wild things grew rare, they urbanised

humans tardily realised:

possums quit the bush unaided

but charismatic fauna were still traded

tigers de-sinewed or Whipsnaded

orangs and howlers got sold with their forests

infective flying foxes bred like tourists

and golf course antelope and kangaroo

fattened the crocodile they drew

children, abandoning outdoors for towers

spent glassed-in hours

combatting monstrous intestine

jag-toothed of maw and spine

while factory protein spiced with clones

grew beef or mutton, milk or bones

and the founts of these grazed free lifelong

lawnmowing, and drinking the billabong.

Les Murray