Poem by ©Isabel del Rio
نحن فقط وما اقترفنا
ما هو ثمن التقدم؟ ما الذي ضحينا به من أجل الوصول إلى النجوم والارتقاء بصناعة التكنولوجيا التي تحقق أحلامنا؟ ما هي احتياجات المخلوقات الحيّة التي تجاهلناها ضمن هذه العملية؟ لماذا نفضّل أنفسنا نحن البشر على بقية المخلوقات فالحياة مقدّسة ومن واجبنا التأكد من أنّ جميع الكائنات الحيّة (تعيشها) كما يجب بدلاً من أن تتحمل أعبائها؟
أحلامنا؟ ما هي احتياجات المخلوقات الحيّة التي تجاهلناها ضمن هذه العملية؟ لماذا نفضّل أنفسنا نحن البشر على بقية المخلوقات فالحياة مقدّسة ومن واجبنا التأكد من أنّ جميع الكائنات الحيّة (تعيشها) كما يجب بدلاً من أن تتحمل أعبائها؟
إنّ الخطر البيئي ليس بضرر سحيق وحسب كان قد حدث للبحر والأرض؛ بلّ، هو بسبب الإساءة لكلّ المخلوقات التي تعيش على وجه الأرض وتتكاثر وتنمو عليه. لقد عانوا ما عانوا على يديّ الإنسان إذ انقرض البعض بسبب إساءة تصرفنا ولا يزال الكثيرمنهم يُستَغل لمصلحتنا. ولهذا صارت حياتهم غير قابلة للعيش، مدّمرة ومقطوعة (أحياناً حتى من تكملة دورة الحياة).
يظنّ الأشخاص المعنيون بهذا الدمار وبوقاحة وخطأ فادح بأنّهم الوحيدون على هذا الكوكب الذين يحقّ لهم العيش. علينا أن لا ننسى بتاتاً بأنّ هذه الأرض الجميلة ليست ملكنا فهي مجرّد استعارة مؤقتة لنعيش جميعاً عليها.
Synopsis
What is the price of progress? What has been sacrificed for the sake of reaching out to the stars and fashioning technologies that make dreams come true? What needs of living creatures have been ignored throughout this process? Why favour us humans above all other species, when life is sacred and it is our duty to make sure that all living creatures experience it to the full instead of having to endure it?
Environmental damage is not only about the abysmal harm done to sea and land, but specially about the abuse to the species who live, breed and thrive on the planet. They have suffered terrible ordeals at the hands of humans: some have become extinct because of our mistreatment of them and many continue to be exploited for our benefit, their lives rendered unlivable, cut short, destroyed.
Humans brazenly and mistakenly think of ourselves as the sole and rightful heirs of the planet, but we must never forget that this beautiful land is not ours to keep but merely borrowed for a very short time indeed…
They were tamed until they became---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Material should not be published in another periodical before at least one year has elapsed since publication in Whispering Dialogue. *أن لا يكون النص قد تم نشره في أي صحيفة أو موقع أليكتروني على الأقل (لمدة سنة) من تاريخ النشر. *All content © 2021 Whispering Dialogue or respective authors and publishers, and may not be used elsewhere without written permission. جميع الحقوق محفوظة للناشر الرسمي لدورية (هَمْس الحِوار) Whispering Dialogue ولا يجوز إعادة النشر في أيّة دورية أخرى دون أخذ الإذن من الناشر مع الشكر الجزيل
unrecognizable and lost their ferocity, their wild ways
and their will.
They were sacrificed to the gods, to the rain,
to the sun,
they no longer fought, and so they yielded to our many needs.
They were eaten raw, boiled alive,
taken prisoner without complaint, exploited for their meat,
their hide, their milk, their horns, their organs, their blood.
They became our companions when they wanted
to be free, they were imprisoned in pens but they only wished to live in the wild,
domesticity had never been something on their mind.
They lost in numbers, species, varieties,
and could never again reclaim
the planet as theirs, they were here solely to serve and to please and to entertain.
They had not been created, they were told,
in the image of the maker, for how could the maker of the universe
look like a horse, a badger, a crab, a snail, a mosquito, a whale, a hippopotamus.
They evolved to survive over millennia, they became
strong and withstood famine, devastation, climatic catastrophes,
but then they could not face up to the ravages inflicted by humankind.
They had to please us by hopping, by miaowing, by
singing, by clapping, by jumping through rings of fire,
by performing circus acts, some were even prostituted.
We used them for transport, for hard labour, for ploughing
and harrowing,
in the worst conditions, under stress, for profit and gain.
We taught them to obey by kicking them, burnt marks on their skin, starved
them, laughed at them, convinced as we were that they did not suffer
because they would not complain or cry out or have a miserable expression.
We still slaughter them in a variety of ways, from the pen to the arena,
from the skies to the bottom of the sea, from one
continent to the next, humankind still surviving at their expense.
We shoot them, electrocute them, behead them,
cut their paws for luck, their ears for celebration, their hoofs for
souvenirs, their antlers for conceit, their bodies stuffed on mantelpieces.
We test products on them, we try to assess
their endurance when submitted to suffering, their
resilience when deprived of basic necessities.
Their organs are removed to see what happens, they are force fed to see
what happens, they are radiated to see what happens, they are
injected with toxic substances to see what happens.
Bred for scientific experiments, made to agonize for scientific experiments,
killed for scientific experiments, forced to live in misery
for the sake of science.
Hounds against foxes, we set one species against another,
we made the savage a slave, we took away their freedom and wrecked
their way of life so that humans can be free and live life to the full.
We, humans, the supposedly superior species because of the size
of our brain and our understanding of the world
did all this, we alone did all this.
