The Fool and the Fire

A fool and a bag in a belt of scrub,
  Cloudless skies and the still hot days,
And the countryside's in a mad hubbub;
  Terror is here and the world's ablaze.
Five thousand sheep went West today,
  Bell's home at the crossing and Casey's pub;
And the cause of it all is a world away;
  A fool with a bag who passed the scrub.

An oaf with a match in a mile of grass,
  Where yesterday the skies shone clear;
But fury leapt where he came to pass;
  And now, ten miles away, comes fear.
Men toil and sweat in the reeking smoke
  That curling drifts to a sky of brass.
And now black ruin and homeless folk
  Are toll to an oaf in a mile of grass.

If the fool be caught can the fool repay?
 What is to do but build again,
And hope for the dawn of a better day,
  When folly is shorn from the ways of men;
What is to do but hope and pray.
  While the scars heal slow in a blackened land,
That the fool shall no more pass this way
  With the seeds of terror in his hand.