Vanishing Animals

(African populations are being killed off by war, famine, disease, and neglect...when will we try to help them?) Time, stretching out, encompasses curtains, on distant savannas, of shimmering heat. And animals vanish: ibex and antelope; elephant; grouse. Here once, now going or gone. Time vanishes now. Moldering greenery, mute, moves mainly in wind -- pliant life, submitting to breezes, passive in sun. Rooted in spots not chosen or won. Plants may not vanish; they prosper. We do not prosper. We vanish, as animal; some go hardly noticed. A dirge, as animals vanish: we vanish unnoticed.