Animal Poems
Manfred Clynes
Winsects
The red ants have come to visit
as they do every year,
in June
they know what they are doing
they come and go by the clock
and disappear again as if they were never here
- they say they come to find water,
and yet they shun the pool
we cannot know what they know so well
togetherness, they come in all different sizes
and are brothers. When one of them is hurt or dies
others come by - are they comforting each other? we don't know
but see a fleeting meeting
a slow surround, a gap in what they know they are doing.
there are hundreds, perhaps thousands in my house now
beautiful red ants
I used to chase them out, even gently,
gently for me, but ferociously for them, sweep them out through the door
hoping they would not be hurt
But it was hopeless, they would come back next day, as if the broom was
only a fantasy, a dream perhaps - if they dream,
as they probably do
And next day I would sweep them out again, to no avail.
I lost my cool, and started killing them one year,
and even that made no difference. They loved to congregate in certain spots
sometimes chained to one another, it seemed, in large groups
but when the appointed time came like fairies and elves, they left, and
left no trace.
And would come back again next year only, in June, after cold winters
and long times I was alone here without ants.
This year, i welcomed them, they don't bite
I don't chase them out, don't kill them.
When they fall into the sweet-potato can, they
drown. There is nothing I can do about that. If one or two fall into the
pool, they last for a long time before they drown, unlike many others
and often I can save them in time, as I see them
battle in the water.
But I know that soon they will be gone, all of them.
Already I miss them.
They are so beautiful
and so perfect
they have no questions, only answers.
How did they get that way?
BEE SAVED
This sunny morning
playing in the warm pool
suddenly, I see a bee
struggling for its life
thrashing the surface water.
Warmly aglow, I look to find a way
to bring it to the shore -
hoping
it would not drown
before I thought of a way.
And then, I saw a single floating leaf:
I brought this leaf
to where the bee was thrashing wildly-
The bee climbed on the leaf
and in amoment,
- flew away.
And never knew
a thought had saved it.
Spy-der
The Life and Like of Spy -der, Spy-der:
Genes for liking, and liking for genes.
I don't like †he spider in my house
But it prefers my house to the outside
There are but few insects inside
Yet it waits patiently, in its web. And spies.
Waiting and waiting, for a moment that
seems never to occur. To us.
Is it asleep? No, it darts forth the rare moment
a hapless prey is caught, totally alert.
But not for days on end.
It has sacrificed the fun of exploration
to achieving patience.
Sometimes two spiders share a common territory,
a common web. And mate.
Later the little spiders are carried
on their back, until they grow enough to make their own web.
Never do they get caught in their own marvellous structure.
Not even the little ones. They are not afraid of it.
It is home.
Of thousand spiders not a single one is caught.
More perfect than required
for survival of the fittest, for evolution.
What does the spider think and feel?
Combining patience so with aggression, hunger,
Sex, and maternal care?
And when it spins that web and recycles it
what enjoyment is it?
The sense of power, does it feel it? from a fiber stronger than almost any we can get molecules to make,
And so so sticky?
The spider feeds on insects that have six legs, and spiders having eight legs are not insects, we say.
I don't like a spider. And it bothers me not to know why.
I marvel at it and its web, but to like its form and behavior
is hard.
Yet I don't really want to kill it:
I feel its right to live, to live the way a spider lives.
But how does nature train it to like what it has to do?
Perhaps evolution makes choices that
who likes what he has to do most survives:
A new paradigm for science to try.
But where are the genes for liking, for liking to wait?
We dont like waiting for them to be found.
And we dont like spiders.
Impending Revision of the Legal System
It is early,
Soon animals will speak
All it takes is for us to implant
Speech genes into some of them
And then they will speak
English
And immediately they will
have human rights.
Turkeys in the Raw
The central issue of our time is:
to breed turkeys, or not
Because we like to eat them
(And care little for what follows from that appetite) :
Healthy for us,
It improves our quality of life,
as we put it
But what does it do
for the turkeys? Their quality of life is
not on the table.
They are.
Let's talk turkey!
Is it better for turkeys to live for a while,
under those grim conditions
than not at all ?
That is the central issue of our time.
Word Wrongs I.
Itness
The A word, and the other F word.
We speak: that gives us the right
to call all those who do not Animals.
A right that is wrong:
Unspeakables are animals -
Equal in the fuzzy sight of our language.
How blinded we are by that word:
We are not animals it says, and lies.
All animals are animals it says, and lies the more
Our glassy essence of which we are most assured
Is that essence ours alone? Not yet have we seen seen through
prejudice that calls a child a Fetus before he or she is born:
an "it"
Taking away its itness, that would Re-mind us.
So it is with Animals.
They all are its.
Our racist language so decrees.
Word wrongs II
Brutality? an (unbeastly) "strange dog".
Post coitam omni animale triste, we say
wistfully -
suddenly we can share with them:
good
to be called an animal.
More often
we use that word to indicate:
insensitivity, cruelty, and violence
the word maligning the beast
as beastly.
and yest, that srange dog cam, unasked,
and licked me, licked my face
when I suddenly cried a little,
on hearing Rabin's
violent death.
Licked me, licked my face
When I cried.
Special Spots: Animals are crated
All Animals are Created Equal
needed: a book of Job for animals.
I
The spotted owl thinks
Why have my spots saved me
When millions of animals die every day
Killed by the masters.
Why does it matter that I have spots?
The spotted owl feels guilty
Like some survivors of the holocaust.
II
Animal Constitution.
All animals are created equal
But by whom?
All animals are created equal
given the right to pursue
their needs
their happiness is not to be questioned
All animals are created equal
so it says, from ancient days on
they have their inalienable rights
they have the right of life
of liberty
they have it written in the constitution
they have it written in their constitution.
All animals are created equal
If indeed they are created at all
And if they are not created, they have
earned their life as have we:
And if we are not created
Indeed we are not created equal.
Even if it says so in the constitution.
The constitution we wrote,
without a thought to animals.
III
All species are crated equal.
Goethe thought God's Love is present when other birds feed
the fledgling cuckoo on the fly*, the cuckoo who has just learned to fly
No more in the nest. whence he threw out his non-brothers to a grim death
But we think they are cuckoo to do so.
He thought that God's Love is present everywhere
when he was eighty, (though not when he wrote the earlier Faust).
Surprising, for a naturalist who discovered evolution eighty years before Darwin.
But if Love belongs to God, why so often does he keep it to himself, it is asked.
When others could use it.
It seems unfair that he should love the spotted owl above so many animals.
Survival of species is put above survival of the individual.
That's what the Nazi did, in their way,
and picked the species they liked above all others.
But we like all species equally. And more among equals, if they are rare.
All species are crated equal, we say, though its not in the constitution.
Its in our interest. A pity to lose even one species. We love them all.
God help us.
* Conversations with Eckerman, 1830
-
Equation of Life.
Mathematicians have forgotten to figure out
an equation: how many animals' lives equal one human life?
In it they need to take into account the quality of life,
of the animals and of the humans,
the proportion of their lives
they have been allowed to live:
the mathematics are not that hard, truly - they win Nobels
for equations of economics,
they should find it not too hard,
if they remember to try.
I hope they will soon. This is to remind them.
How many animals are equal to one abortion?
That depends on the animal.
How many humans are equal
to a million animals dying early in their life,
to be eaten, or for experiments?
Per kilogram, that depends on the animal.
Big animals have more kilograms per life.
Let's make a hypothesis.
(Leave out the suffering,
as a first approximation. That needs to be integrated
over time. Everybody has to suffer (sometime),
so to equalize suffering among the many
as far as is possible
is a different mathematical problem.
To be tackled, maybe, after the first problem has been solved.
Using the calculus and differential equations
of maxima and minima, perhaps...)
Here we are concerned merely with the possibility of life,
as it is subtracted from one who lives.
Shall we propose a prize for the solution?
A steak dinner maybe at the Two Seasons, or a filet mignon?
Perhaps one every week for a year, to the winner?
Mathematics is an honorable profession, not concerned with prizes
Why not let it be concerned with life, the best prize of all ?
Here is the hypothesis.
Let us assume that one (human) life equals
x lives of animal y living z years,
under equivalent conditions. Then let us see where that takes us.
Harris Ranch
Class picture of 1996: 80,000 Sad, Depressed Cattle
I see them still:
80,000 Cattle stand, isolated
on brown, flat earth
Head bowed - they shuffle a bit, slowly,
just a bit, that shows they are still alive
not sculpted figures like the chinese soldiers
in the ancient mass grave.
For three months
for three months they stand like this
depressed, isolated, not interacting at all,
before they are led to slaughter
Can you imagine
how 80,000 depressed animals look?
No? Nor could I, until I saw them
I had to stop the car, and look.
I had not seen anything like this -
outside concentration camps.
80,000 forlorn,
forlorn animals, not 100, not 500,
the color of the soil on which they rigidly stand,
an ocean of brown big animals, all depressed,
as far as eyes could sweep,
One has not seen depression, until one sees this,
No, one has not felt depression till
faced to face
80,000, 80,000 depressed animals.
Standing, standing, so many, they define depression - and that nobody cares.
Nobody cares
Nobody cares
Is nobody
calling a doctor?
Stars
A nocturnal walk along a country road
with Crinkles, shaggy dog.
Peacefully, with measured joy
We walk along the lone path
He on the leash,
I holding it in hand
Curiously,
It is me
Who has to piss
First
Crinkles watches,
Unconcerned.
A little later
He pisses too.
We walk on, aware
Of sounds, of shadows
In the night
Distant and close.
He more than I.
Above us
A wide flimmering carpet
The iridescent starry sky
Strewn in random radiant play
Yet each in its right place.
"Look at the stars, Crinkles,"
I say
As I raise my head
"Look at the stars!"
But he does not respond
And looks straight ahead
"Look at the stars, Crinkles"
I say again,
And point his head up.
But he does not seem to notice
Not aware
Of the wonder,
The promise, the security
I try to teach him :
"Look, Crinkles"
Over and over again
I don't know what he sees
When he looks there.
As yet
His brain
Does not see the stars.
Visit to a Modern Zoo
Here the animals have regained
Some of their dignity
No longer in cages, their fenced
Preserves, green and wooded
Give them a modicum of freedom,
And protection from one another.
They don't watch the people
Who watch them.
But I watched people
Watching the animals:
Relieved
Temporarily
Of their own cages
They bounded
The zoo was music played
For them by the universe.
Yet animals need no music
To have their dignity.
And even through the music of the zoo
Humans did not regain their lost dignity
As did those beautiful animals
Living in the modern zoo.
And I, writing this poem
Am filled with gratitude and sorrow
Gratitude for seeing out of my own cage
And sorrow for those shut in.
