MANIFEST
this website is my testament
.

This evening I heard Gary Baur of the Farm Sanctuary speak. He had pictures as part of the presentation projected onto the screen of the auditorium. It was pretty much the terrible stuff I've heard before. But here was one story which tore me apart.

He showed a picture of a large brown cow, lying twisted on a muddy, puddled patch of ground.. Her neck was crooked and looking back at him as he took the picture. She was on her way to the slaughterhouse. The workers were trying to separate her from her calf. She fought with everything she had for the safety of her baby. They ended up breaking her neck. They got her baby and took him away. The kindest thing would have been for the veterinarian to euthanize her. They wouldn't do that. She was worth money. She lay waiting, perhaps for days, to be dragged to slaughter. As long as she was alive she was legal to be slaughtered for meat.

In the lecture hall I held my ex-military reserve.

In the privacy of my home I am unable to rest, racked with sorrow. This story has overwhelmed me. The tears are pouring down my face. How is it that there is such cruel hatred on this earth? For all of them, pigs, apes, rats, rabbits, dogs, bears, baboons, turkeys, chickens, my heart is overwhelmed with sorrow. I refuse to be a monster. I may be ordinary, but this meanness, this cruelty is beyond my ordinariness. I can never be a part of this.

How do these humans, these monsters, live with themselves?

I will never indulge in the sorrow of an innocent. I will dedicate my life to their safety. I cannot do otherwise.

Samsur Rahaman, University of Michigan, September 2008.

 

Reader - you have read enough.
If you desire still more,
then be a poem yourself :
not visitor - but door.

Angelus Silesius (1624-77)
translated by Anthony Weir

combatting
normality

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