I wrote this poem after I saw a video, recounting the horrific cruelty made against bulls: multi mini-spears inserted into their torso, fireworks attached to horns. This angry poem attempts to speak up for the emasculated bulls of Spain…
I pity your plaintive bellowing
from dungeon-dark prison echoing,
your toro ton-weight electrocuted,
slowly, cruelly to be executed;
what awful, absurd theatre
– cruelty the main feature,
drunken crowds, harmless creature.
O titanic toro! charging provacteur’s cape,
this circular hell you cannot escape;
horns shaved, co-ordination a-kilter
taunted by mocking lance-tilters;
weary, stigmata-stabbed, confused;
upheld tradition is a riseable ruse,
animal rights seasonally refused.
Fiesta trumpets jocularly mock,
sober people should take stock,
animated inebriates unfairly jeer
goading on your primal fear:
blood-gargled your plaintive cry,
terrified eyes plead, mercy denied –
this bull for Spanish sadists died….
But where your creator now –
back on farm with calf and cow?
Flagged blades decorate your spine,
kneeling sacrifice, majesty supine;
last gasp whispers, silver cord snapped,
sword thrust: conquered, capped;
dead beast dragged, arena clapped.
Blood graffitti curdles on hot sand
mutely crying for justice to stand;
does Franco slyly smile, dry-eyed?
Indifferent Iberia, justice denied
except by contrarian Catalan
bull-baiting there under a ban;
“Prou!” states Bible and Quran….
Animal rights activists in Spanish Catalonia gathered signatures to force the regional parliament to debate a ban on bull-fighting.They campaigned under the platform “Prou!”, or, “Enough!” in Catalan.
