The dodo by C. Buddingh'

The dodo In fifteen ninety-eight     discovered on Mauritius     by Dutch sailors;     they called it 'walghvogel', took it with them to Amsterdam     and exhibited it there. It was a kind of pigeon, bigger than a turkey,     with an odd, hooked beak,     (as you can still see     on a painting of Savery), and it laid just one, big white egg     on an untidy little heap of grass. Dodo meant 'dope' or 'sucker'     (from the Portugese 'doudo');     every time when a ship     called at the island, it was for sport or for resupply     butchered by thousands. The sailors also introduced pigs,     who ate the eggs     and the chicks, who like     their parents could not fly. In sixteen eighty-one the last one     was bludgeoned. In the marshes on Mauritius     they have over and over again     excavated skeletons,     but there further remains only a leg, with the foot still on it,     that is carefully preserved in Oxford.

C. Buddingh' [1918-1985]

Original title: 'De dodo' - From the collection 'Gedichten 1938 / 1970' - Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij - Amsterdam - 1977.