Tuesday Poem: "Poem for a Vegetarian"

This morning I had my brains stewed for breakfast

and the lamb lies down

on the Dresden China

where they eat only rice,

boiled white because purity

is the essence of hunger

and Deng Xiaoping,

asked how he viewed the American gift

of the musk oxen,

said, “They were delicious.”

POET'S NOTE: This poem was inspired by an article in a newspaper that I read many years ago about how when US President Richard Nixon was trying to thaw the American relationship with China, he had two musk oxen sent to the Chinese Premier as a gift. I believe they were a breeding pair and I guess it was assumed by Nixon that they would be placed in a zoo. Sometime later when the US ambassador to China asked Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Premier, about the gift, he supposedly replied that they were delicious. Cultural rapprochement still had some way to go.

On another related aspect, Morrissey, lead singer of The Smiths, famously sang that "Meat is Murder". He is right of course, but many of us still remain somewhat guilty assassins of our mammal and fish brethren.


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www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com