Poetry – The last one – In the Cage. – A poem for the Chimps and Gorillas.

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The last one – In the cage

As a child I was taken to London zoo. I stood in front of the small cage in which Guy the Gorilla was housed. He looked out at me with sad rheumy eyes. He seemed so human.

There was a great resignation. Guy was bored to tears.

We humans have evolved from a branch of apes that gave rise to the gorillas and chimps. Only one percent of our DNA is different. Our greater intelligence is the result of a small number of changes. It is responsible for our technology and the weapons and tools with which we are busy destroying the planet and killing everything that lives.

We assume that all those chimps and gorillas have no intelligence.

We are wrong.

They have plenty of wisdom. It is merely different to ours.

Our binocular vision coupled with that opposable thumb has enabled our tool making and our technology. It has enabled us to destroy our cousins.

I think they know their days are numbered.


 

The last one – In the cage

 

What wise thoughts lie

Behind those eyes;

Brown eyes so human.

The blitheringed

Say you have no soul

But I see the sadness –

The knowledge of your fate.

 

What strange tools

Could be devised

By that hand –

That hand with thumb

And finger to pick

And grasp?

 

What contented future

Has been savagely

Plucked from

Your grasp

And snatched

From your mind?

 

Opher 7.11.2015

Poetry – Gorilla – an elegy to the inevitable demise of a relative of ours.

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We share ninety nine per cent of our genes with the chimpanzees and gorillas. They are the closest relatives we have left after we eradicated our fellow human Neanderthals.

They are sentient, intelligent and peaceful. We are sentient, intelligent and ruthless.

They are hunted for bush-meat. Their babies are prised away from their dead mothers and sold. Their hands and feet are hacked off and sold as trophies.

The forests they live in are opened up with logging roads for the hunters to exploit; then the trees are sawn down to leave bare soil.

Their numbers decrease and the destruction is relentless as our numbers soar and greed, selfishness and necessity create a tsunami that is rolling over nature.

It fills me with hopeless despair.

Gorilla

Ninety nine per cent of us

Living wild and free;

Tight-knit family –

How we’d like to be.

 

Wandering, playing at ease

As they roam around.

Eating, watching

Secure in their ground.

 

Around them trees are tumbling

Sounds of chain-saws whir;

Disturbing peace,

Shivering the fur.

 

Yet it could be a sly shot

To snag easy meat,

Snatching a baby –

Chopping trophy feet.

 

Encroaching ever nearer

Inevitable

Cruel destruction

Writings on the wall.

 

Opher 16.7.2015

 

Anthropocene Apocalypse – Imagine a world without Chimpanzees, Elephants, Gorillas, Rhinos, Orang-utans, Hippos, Tigers and thousands more. That’s what we are heading towards.

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All over the world the population of humans is soaring, the habitats are being polluted or destroyed, jungles being cleared, strip mining, logging and farming are taking their toll, and the animals are being slaughtered for meat or superstitious medicine.

We seem to be sleep-walking towards a concrete jungle.

The seas and rivers are overfished, the natural world is built over.

It’s time to make clear lines of demarcation – 50% for us and 50% for the rest of the animal life.

It is almost too late.

Anthropocene Apocalypse – the Rights of Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Whales?

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The Civil Rights battle is won. Human Beings are all one species and equal before the law in most countries. All that remains is to enforce the law, remove the vestiges of racism and establish true equality. There are still battles to be fought but the war is won.

What hasn’t yet been won is Rights for Primates and other sentient animals.

The primates (Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutangs, Gibbons and Bonobos) are our closest relatives. They are obviously intelligent, have advanced family structures and behaviour patterns and yet are still being treated like vermin. Their habitat is being destroyed by logging and they are being butchered for food, trinkets, medicine and to procure pets.

We need a world-wide Civil Rights movement for Primates. They are need to be afforded rights, protected and given land to live in undisturbed.

Another group of intelligent organisms are the whales, dolphins and porpoises. They have bigger and more complex brains than humans, a social structure, language and high intelligence yet they are still being barbarically gaffed and callously hacked and sawed to death in barbaric acts. They too need to be afforded rights as sentient beings and protected!

Now is the time to campaign for Animal Rights!!!