THE SANITISED SOCIETY (or: "We Can’t Bear the Sight of Blood")
Copyright 1993, S Hartwell
The meat comes wrapped in cellophane hygiene
Butchered by a knife the shopper hasn’t seen;
The blood disposed of, the creature’s squeals unheard
By those who eat the flesh of slaughtered beast and bird
As if it were no more than a plucked fruit
Not the once living flesh it is in truth.
This sanitised society dissociates
Itself from the beasts whose carved flesh fills our bellies and our plates.
Hid from our squeamish eyes the newly dead -
Not for them the bier of their own familiar bed,
But cold limbs are laid upon a mortuary stone
More suited to a fish-shop slab than to our kindred’s flesh and bone;
While strangers wad their mouths and dress
The candle-waxiness of deceased flesh
Before it’s hid within a coffin funeral-chest
To hide from this sanitised society the frailty of death.
THE MEAT-LESS SOCIETY
Copyright 2022, S Hartwell
We’re told our cuisine must be meat-free,
Our gardens chemical- and peat-free,
Our garbage, sorted, bagged up neatly,
Our emissions particle- and heat-free.
No more meat and no more eggs!
Except for fake stuff made from veg,
The world is teetering on the edge,
With growing billions to be fed.
Peasants, prisoners, kings and queens,
All must dine on wheat and beans,
Grown in fields where once were trees,
Oh what is this insanity?
The wildlife we tried to save
It is no more, it all was slain
As pests upon our beans and grains,
Because THEIR land had been “reclaimed.”
No more land of milk and honey,
No forests of old and fruitful trees,
Fields fed by agri-chemical money,
Leaching poison into silent seas.