SAPPHIC VERSES FOR EARTH DAY - A DAY LATE

I had forgotten this. Wrote it last January, and am putting it up again in the hope that it might annoy someone.

The Silly Goose




I'm not a great fan of so-called deep ecology.
Tell me that the shark is top of a food chain
Which includes me, and I'm happy to slaughter
Every bloody one of them.


Pace loopy William Blake and daft junkie Coleridge,
Beasts merely irritate, unless I can eat them,
Milk them, or wear them. Leather boots are healthiest.
Leather belts last longest.


Then one day last summer, invited out to lunch, I
Was sitting in the garden, downing a cool Warka
When through the wire fence I saw an oldish grandmother
Hatchet in hand, grope


Under some planks on the ground. Then she pulled out,
Its legs twisted tight behind its back in her free hand,
A beautiful white goose, fattened for tomorrow's
Family banquet.


She stumbled over rough grass to a mossless tree stump.
The goose turned its head back to look. Saw what was coming,
Meekly stretched its neck straight over the block. Down
Swung the cruel axe. Blood.


Then, without appetite, wearily and sadly
I ate, drank, and smilingly made conversation.
I think it was carp, or trout - I don't recall much.
But I will remember


I think forever the glance that the silly
Goose gave her butcher, how, seeing axe and face,
All hope departed, she sadly stretched her neck out
Like any martyr.


We call geese "silly" - it used to mean just "harmless",
Like ducks and chickens. When I get my garden
I shall have some poultry, only for the eggs, though.
Let them die of old age.


But I don't care a damn for rare endangered species
Especially when dangerous. If I had my island
I'd have a pit where crocodiles, snakes, bears, and sharks
Fought to the death. Just


To annoy the Goodalls and the Attenboroughs,
People who rate animals as equal to humans.
Maybe chuck a few Greenpeacers to the crocodiles
To make up the food chain.






























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