poetry

The argument for being a natural born killer (and not a vegetarian)

We are all slaves to nature in different ways, writes poet and artist Frieda Hughes

Friday 16 August 2024 10:31 EDT
‘I step over my threshold / To see a cranefly struggling. At first, I couldn’t understand / The smaller reason for its immobility’
‘I step over my threshold / To see a cranefly struggling. At first, I couldn’t understand / The smaller reason for its immobility’ (Frieda Hughes)

CARNIVORE

The two good-looking men towered over my younger self.

Our conversation was driving us apart

As if our differences were insurmountable.

I could see them drifting off inside their heads

As if it was something I said. Devout, their conviction

Demanded that meat eaters should be more panda,

Chewing bamboo instead of each other and vegetarians.

I argued that tigers would starve, snakes would shrivel,

Wolves would turn on each other getting thinner and thinner,

Penguin-less, whales would sink to the ocean floor,

Foxes would waste away without a chicken dinner,

And rabbits would over-breed without a carnivore

To nibble down their numbers.

They said they couldn’t stay,

And I forgot them until now, as I step over my threshold

To see a cranefly struggling. At first, I couldn’t understand

The smaller reason for its immobility, but there it was,

A little spider, reeling in its bigger catch, a leg at a time,

No more able to avoid the eating of other insects

Then it could stop being a spider.

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