One Gaff and a Slow Slice
One gaff
And a slow serrated slice,
Sawing and hacking to the cord.
Then relief.
Agony prolonged,
Intense,
And grief.
Gentle and trusting
Easily herded
Into the shallows
Where the blood
Is curded.
Gleefully stabbed.
The shock resounds.
Excited hunter
With joy rebounds.
No concept of the pain.
Sad meat upon the shore.
Crimson seeps between
Each grain
But the fever
Still screams
For more.
Butchered in the sunset
Ruddy water
Reflects
The crime.
Hunter stands
In depths
Of gory grime
As one
Of the great tragedies
Of our time.
Opher 4.7.2015
One Gaff and a Slow Slice
This was the theme of a number of my Anthropocene Apocalypse poems.
The dolphins and porpoises have bigger brains than us. They are certainly intelligent. But they are gentle creatures with no need to build shelters or machines, let alone weapons.
I stood on the hills above Wineglass Bay in Tasmania with my wife Liz and my friends Dylan and Julia. It is one of the most beautiful sights with its emerald green water and golden sands. I thought it was called Wineglass Bay solely because of its shape as a wine glass. It wasn’t. In the older days they would herd thousands of dolphins into the shallow water. The hunters would stand in the water gaffing them with huge serrated hooks and sawing through their necks to sever the spinal cord with great serrated knives. They would continue in an orgy of murder until all the trapped terrorized animals were slaughtered and the water they stood in was turned from emerald green to crimson. From the hills above the water of the bay was turned red as if it was a half-full glass of Beaujolais.
Can you imagine that much blood?
Can you imagine the pain? To be speared with a huge gaff while some brute slowly cuts through your body with a great knife?
You’d think that was bad enough. That those were uncivilized days long gone. Back then people were brutalized and cruel. Except it is still going on today in the same grisly manner as before. In the Faeroe Islands they are still doing exactly this.
They are as bad as the sadists of ISIS!