Poem: Lambs
"These fields have always been tended / by the dark hand of death"
This week, a poem I wrote earlier in Spring, when the lambs had just been born. I live in a rural part of England, and when I was a young child at my village primary school, we would go down to the farm every year to watch the lambs being born. It’s the kind of thing which makes a strong impression on a child, and I can still remember it vividly. The smells of the farm shed, the beds of hay, the rather gruesome but fascinating spectacle of watching a sheep giving birth. The helpless just-born lamb with its damp, matted fur.
It was probably my first inkling of understanding of the circle of life, which starts with birth, and this poem continues that to its natural end: the likely possibility that some of these lambs, born every spring, will be slaughtered for meat.
I became a vegetarian as a teenager, but have since softened my hard-line stance against eating meat, though I still choose not to do it. I now view the matter as a complex social and moral issue involving a lot of responsibility on the part of humans. These farmers make their livelihoods this way, and I think it would be unfair to assume that they don’t feel the weight of that responsibility somehow. The poem ultimately calls for not a simplification of the issue but a commitment to not look away from it, to hold the tension.
Indigenous cultures the world over have historically had sacred rituals around hunting and view the animals they kill almost as holy objects, honouring them by thanking the animals for giving their lives as food, as nourishment. In this way, these groups enter into a relationship of reciprocity with the animals they hunt which strengthens the bond between people and land.
I actually think it would be better to kill an animal yourself (responsibly, of course, not as sport) than to engage in the distancing process of sourcing meat already pre-prepared and pre-packaged from the shops - the blood and the death, as well as the extreme suffering inflicted by factory farming, kept conveniently out of sight. But I won’t be joining one of the many pheasant hunts which I know are going on around where I live anytime soon.
On to the poem.
Lambs
One day they aren’t there
and the next they are -
little white bundles of longing
running about the fields,
so full of energy, such newness,
such innocence.
Their mothers eye me with suspicion,
their instincts for protection
finely tuned, though I am just
an admiring onlooker, I mean no harm.
The farmer arrives in his truck
and they start bleating up a storm -
the sound fills the air; it’s deafening,
thrilling. He enters the field
and they all flock to him like ships
to a lighthouse, like moths to flame.
He gets out and wades into the throng of
gaggling animals, plucking a lamb from the crowd.
He takes it back to the truck
and the others clamour around him, even louder now.
Is it excitement or alarm?
He gets in the truck and closes the door.
What is he doing in there?
Feeding the lamb? Giving it medicine?
Killing it? I’m not sure.
Don’t be shocked. People eat lambs.
Where do you think they come from?
Not the supermarket shelves, wrapped in cellophane.
These fields have always been tended
by the dark hand of death.
This is how it is.
So when it arrives on your white dinner plate,
browned and glistening, out of context,
remember what it once was:
fed on grass, suckled on milk,
leaping with life.
I’m not saying don’t do it.
I’m not saying feel guilty.
I’m saying don’t deny the reality;
don’t forget.Thank you for reading - if you enjoyed it, you can like or share this post, which always helps. Next week, something new…