By Morris Dean
What a plight to be of the human race –
grabbing everything, claiming every place,
eating all kinds of animal
(no laws yet make it criminal) –
were I pig or cow instead, I'd have no face.
All you can eat, the big restaurant's big sign said,
any creature you want, we'll catch it and make it be dead,
then grill, stew, fry, or boil it,
bake, roast, fricassee, or broil it,
and if you want we'll serve it up with next door's annoying dog Fred.
My dad made me go hunting, said it was okay
to pull the trigger on the wolf who I couldn't say
deserved to die.
For a moment, I
aimed along the line where sight of my dad lay.
Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean
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Two limerick laments on the unbearable blightness of being human at this stage of our uncivilization.
ReplyDeleteAnd I just added a third, freshly minted,
Deletepretty square on target, not simply hinted,
but still, with three
it seems to me
the depth of the quandary's barely dented.
Yes, sadly there is a lot of uncivilization going on in our world. I read the headlines proclaiming the horrors committed against animals and receive notices from Change.org with petitions to sign on these and other atrocities against animals and people. I eat meat and wish I could give it up feeling the way I do about it all ! Wolves are beautiful misunderstood animals and we are advocates of them in our family. So much so we won't even read Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs !
ReplyDeleteDawn, I really appreciate your moral support. Thank you for taking the time to give it.
DeleteMy vision of mankind generally's treating all "the least among us" with compassion (as a few believe Jesus may even have taught) unfolds into a world of justice we don't see now and, tragically, are not likely ever to see.
You are welcome. And yes I sadly agree we aren't going to see much compassion in our apathetic world.
DeleteLast night, watching the Vince Vaughn comedy, Deliveryman - he drives a meat truck - I was surprised when one of the 533 children produced by his donated sperm complained about the job and announced that he was a vegetarian, then paraphrased Leo Tolstoy and quoted St. Thomas More.
DeleteThe Tolstoy quote I believe was being paraphrased: "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
More (1478 – 1535): "The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable."
I found the scene again in Deliveryman. The Tolstoy quote was apparently a literal quote, but not the quote I found and reported Sunday. The actual quote was: "If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food."
DeleteIn looking for this quote on the web, I found a site with a number of Tolstoy quotations of his thoughts and feelings about ethical vegetarianism: "Animal Rights Online: Quotations Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)."
One quote casts Tolstoy as a Christian highly critical of the failure of mainstream Christianity (and of Judaism, I guess) to interpret "Thou shalt not kill" with the proper inclusiveness: "'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai."
I agree with Tolstoy that the commandment needs not to have been proclaimed in any religious scripture in order to be felt in an attuned human heart, and its proclamation in scripture hasn't ensured its being felt in many, many "religious" hearts, which can be quite indifferent to non-human animal suffering and death.