From steppe and tartary wolf stories came.
We heard them as children, thrilling with fear.
The cossack serf who hurled himself at them
was soon devoured, coat, cap and beard,
while master and children galloped
to a safe haven.
This was wolf country; whether
the night was as black as a raven
or moon-yellow as their pelts, the packs held sway.
As they bayed a moment came
when sorcerers threw salt in the fire
and prayed for a spurt in the exorcizing flame.
The wolves never left; their myths increased,
glowing in the dark like fireflies.
When people talked of salamander fires
they had glimpsed a swarm of wolverine eyes.

My gardener said, however cold
the first bleak light of day
where once a wolf-flank had rested for the night
the leaf-loam steamed as he slunk away.

Near home they were smaller, less than hip high
and grey of flank,
bellying forward at dusk to nibble
at our villages as the wilderness shrank.
They hunted in pairs, one caused a diversion,
circled the village, bared his fangs, snarled.
The other raced down the street and carried away a child.

All the hungers of the world were caged in their bellies
and hungers for the wild.
After the last rabbit had bounced out of his hutch and the porcupine had shed his quills

and the last swamp deer had slipped on bitumen
and the barasingha had been felled by a telescope,
they turned their snorkels to the moon
and howled for the last time the howl of no hope.
They sniffed the wind and moved into rnyth,
into childhood dreams, allegory, fiction;
and catching a scent of their own death
they tracked it to extinction.