Come our one great bushfire
pigs, sty-released, declined to quit
their pavements of gravel and shit.
Other beasts ran headlong, whipping
off with genitals pinched high.
Human mothers taught their infants creek-dipping.
Fathers galloped, gale-blown blaze stripping
grass at their heels and on by
too swift to ignite any houses.
One horse baked in a tin shed,
naked poultry lay about dead
having been plucked in mid flight
but where pigs had been legion
only fuzzy white hoofprints crowded
upwind over black, B B B
and none stayed feral in our region.
—Les Murray
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