Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1. May 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Voice of an Animal
– Dr Siri (Telugu original)
– Atreya Sarma U (Translator)
Why do you keep mum, oh man? Say, why do you keep mum?
You have a heart, but why don’t you throb?
When even the dumb animals are struggling to live,
And injustices are happening right before your eyes,
Why don’t you open your mouth, though you’re gifted
with speech?
You cry hoarse, “Bestiality is the animals’ instinct,
And humanity is the instinct of man.”
Then why do you behave like a beast
By deserting goodness and burying humanness?
We the animals hunt only to satisfy the pangs of our
hunger,
But you the humans hunt only to pander to your greed.
Ours is a bare need, but yours is a bloody gluttony.
Every time bestiality is seen in the acts of you the
humans,
Why do you give us the finger for that streak of
yours?
You tear apart
our hearts mercilessly with the bullets of your guns,
But you scream and shed tears even for a small injury
of your body.
Why don’t you realise that the feeling of pain is not
exclusive to you –
But common to every living being including us the poor
animals?
The same earth that has given birth to you, has given
birth to us as well;
So, we too have a right to live here just like you.
Why doesn’t it occur to you that this world is not
your monopoly?
Why have you despoiled Nature by cutting down –
The trees and killing the animals?
Why don’t you change your ways even after seeing the
destruction –
And calamities triggered by your deformation of
Nature?
When you want to live on by slaughtering us for your
rapacity
With no trace of mercy for us and not letting any of
us to live on,
Aren’t you losing your distinct humaneness and
morphing into a beast?
You’re the only living being endowed
With rationality in this entire creation.
Don’t forget this fact and decay into a petty
creature.
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