Poetry

The 41st Year of 1968

Les Murray

The 41st Year of 1968
i.m. 173 dead in the Victorian fires of 2009

Australians were improving
though some still had to be
threatened by law when they applied
to remove native trees.

Settler-style felling must stay gone

despite what Victorian gum species
do at least one time in
each human generation

so families burned alive
along steep narrow roads
strung high on the mountains
through spindly second growth.

In deep 1968, one then
simply changed the subject.