Vivian Smith

“Thylacine”

They’ll not find him in the hills

Above the slow-ferned gulley;
He’s gone to earth like a sunken creek
In an unknown valley;

Nor find the fur on the bent thorn

Nor hear him moan at the raw moon:
He stalks down the valleys of the years
With his old love, his old pain

They’ll not find him in the hills:

He’s gone to earth in an unknown valley
With legends of coal and Time in stone,
With the sly fern, with the gulley

From Vivian Smith, Selected Poems (HarperCollins 1985)