For the Murdered Lambs of Easter/Passover
Animal Rights Poetry By Heidi Stephenson From All-Creatures.org

“You shall not kill!”
Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17

“There’s rosemary,
that’s for remembrance:
pray, love, remember.“
(Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5)

Is this the way to welcome in the spring, the season of new life, the miracle of newborns—with their bloody slaughter? With the destruction of baby animals, and the devouring of their ‘roasted’ bodies, (spiked—for good measure—with rosemary)?

Over 500,000,000 lambs (and sheep) are killed globally every year*, with a significant increase at Easter, Passover and the mass slaughters that mark the end of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha.**

After William Blake’s The Lamb

Little Lamb who hurt thee?
Dost thou know who hurt thee?
Gave thee strife and bid thee bleed;
No hellish dream: a dreadful deed.
Took thy clothing of delight;
Softest clothing, thine by right.
Took thy baby, tender joints;
Making silent vales give voice!
Little Lamb who killed thee?
Dost thou know who killed thee?

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by human name;
For he calls himself a man.
He is cruel and he is wild:
In him there is nothing mild.
He a killer, thou a lamb.
Thy life taken, to his shame.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

 

Haiku

Rain pounds at glass panes.
Lambs clinging to trees in fields.
Heart sinks like granite.

 * Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
** Lambing Lies

©Heidi Stephenson, April 2019

[Originally published on InternationalTimes.it]