Sacred Life of Animals
You say that life is sacred,
And the right to live is the most fundamental,
That is the only thing, the fine line,
That is keeping common people safe
From the rich and powerful
With hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
But if every life is sacred,
Then why do some dogs die car-struck,
Why is that not a hit-and-run?
Why is that not a murder?
Why, when we roast pheasants or birds,
And devour them,
Why is that celebration?
When you kill animals for sports,
Or make leather out of them,
Why is that not a murder?
You will be hanged if you kill a human,
But it’s just some years of imprisonment
If you kill a stray dog.
Between the lives of humans and other animals,
I wonder why this discrimination.
Birds, and dogs, and elephants,
They bleed, too,
When they are hurt, they scream, too,
And that scream should echo in our hearts,
Long as we don’t bring them justice,
Long we don’t change things for good.
We live in our furnished apartments or country house,
Far from the violence that goes on and on, every day,
In industries like animal products and dairy farms.
We just buy meat and leather bags as end products,
Unaware, totally unaware, of what animals are going through there.
Those animals probably haven’t smiled for months.
Have lived with lines of tears on their faces,
Shackled in heavy steel chains, those teardrops stayed on their face for too long,
Until it dried up and left its mark.
Are animals capable of smiling, too? You may ask.
Yes, they can if we let them.
If we let that pet elephant wander with its herd,
It will roam around forests and landscapes,
And while it covers a corner of the world,
With its family,
It will be the happiest animal on the face of the earth.
We say every life is sacred,
But do we not give the other forms of life that importance?
Taking a life away is a murder nevertheless,
But killing an animal just needs years of sentence for atonement?
I question that belief, that mindset of human societies,
And the laws and government institutions that allow that.
We have already taken this planet from other animals,
Destroyed their natural habitats, sent them away,
And some to be forgotten from the face of the earth.
While we cannot change that,
Can we at least be good neighbours?
Can we live in peace and harmony and not kill the very beings we live with?
We are the strongest species on the planet for some time,
But we forget that great power brings great responsibility as well.
Why do we quote those words when it is a matter of people,
But forget the same for other kinds?
I am not writing this to just express my thoughts,
I want you to wonder too,
I am not writing this just to induce these thoughts,
I want us to take action, too.
Yes, carnivores will always feed on prey,
And they will die if they don’t eat,
That is the rule of the jungle I know
But we humans can live without taking the joy away
from the lives of animals, and thus, we should,
Breeding animals only for products
and treating their lives as mere byproducts,
Keeping them caged with years and years of torture,
Come on, we can be better than this.
This is our responsibility as the strongest on the planet,
To empower other species to live well,
Not wreck their lives instead.
