They look like shaggy dogs, but wrongly drawn,
And a legend on their cage tells us there is
No evidence that any of their kind
Has ever attacked man, woman, or child.

Now it turns out there were no babies dropped
In sacrifice, delaying tactics, from
Siberian sleds; now it turns out, so late,
That Little Red Ridinghood and her Gran

Were the aggressors with the slavering fangs
And telltale tails; now it turns out, at last,
That gray wolf and timber wolf are nearly gone,
Done out of being by the tales we tell

Told us by Nanny in the nursery—
Young sparks we were, to set such forest fires
As blazed from story into history,
And put such bounty on their wolfish heads

As brought the few survivors to our terms,
Surrendered in happy Babylon among
The peacock dusting off the path of dust,
The tiger pacing in the striped shade.

Copyright Credit: Howard Nemerov, “Wolves in the Zoo” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (University of Chicago Press, 1977). Used with the permission of the Estate of Howard Nemerov.