Socialist Sonnet No. 86

Meating Need

 

Don’t set an Amazonian ranch hand

To cut or burn the rain forest for beef,

As animal husbandry is the thief

Of earth. Pork and mutton degrade the land

No matter how organically they’re farmed.

Then, however well-tended, there must be

The trauma of the slaughterhouse, To see

A grassy grazing meadow is to be charmed

By an idyll, concealing the bolt gun

And letting blade. Also, there’s the methane.

Yet the world can be fed all its protein

Once precision fermentation’s begun,

And three quarters of farmland reconciled

To a natural carbon reserving wild.

 

D. A.