Because goats can climb
and cave, clamber to find cover
in the bushes of what they can’t eat
which isn’t much. They chomp so much
they shift the rootless dunes.
Goats causing every crenelation
every lost rufous wren call. We knew they could
only be betrayed by their own.

The radio transmitter pernicious, pervasive
beyond ocean, island, crag, a third eye
surveying the common languages of hooves.
On Dirk Hartog it took three.
One each tribe. None survived.
Or was rewarded by any leaves of silver.

Image: Martin Vorel