The Hunt: Metaphor for LGBT History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

This post/poem is taken from the archives of my gay-interest blog for May 2017; a gay-friendly straight friend whose cousin is gay and has been recently hospitalised following a nasty homophobic attack asked me to post it here today.

I have always thought hunting with hounds is a sick sport. Maybe that’s because I have a tried and tested empathy with any animal on the run; having been the victim of homophobic attacks in the distant past, I know how it feels. Some of us would get away by the skin of our teeth, of course, as I (usually) did, but not everyone escapes uninjured (or worse) and the trauma may well haunt a person all their life.

In some parts of the world (countries like Uganda and Iran, for example, to name just two) gay people have to hide their sexuality, yet are often sniffed out by bigoted forces and don't live to tell the tale. It is a tragedy that shames the civilised world. Sadly, it is as all too common a tragedy for unprotected species in the animal world as for gay people living in an intrinsically homophobic environment...or anyone else seen as fair game by those who choose to interpret this or that socio-cultural-religious take on life as justification for the unjustifiable.

[Hunters] take unbelievable pleasure in the hideous blast of the hunting horn and baying of the hounds… Erasmus (1466 - 1536)


THE HUNT, METAPHOR FOR LGBT HISTORY

I hear a horn,
the baying of hounds,
thundering hooves,
need to run and hide
if only I can

Closing in on me,
horn, hounds, hooves;
scarier still,
a stench of humans
laughing

I need to pause
but the only rest for me
will last forever
once laughter catches
up with me

My legs fail,
drag me to a sanctuary
of friendly bushes
but the frothing pack
sniffs me out

The lead hound
pauses, poised to leap
for my throat,
now strikes, and all
I hear is laughter

Copyright R. N. Taber 2011

Agenda for a Cull OR Witnesses for the Prosecution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

 “Each spring, the Canadian government authorizes fishermen to club or shoot to death hundreds of thousands of baby seals for their fur,” writes the Humane Society of the United States. This is a reference to the fact that the vast majority of harp seals killed are between one and 3.5 months old. However, some context might be in order. "Those rotisserie chickens at the grocery store were likely alive for only 40 days. The average pack of bacon comes from a pig that was only on earth for four months." - National Post, April 2018

I’m so glad I have been a pescatarian or some years now, almost vegan since being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014. (Why 'almost'? I haven't yet been able to give up fish completely.)

This poem is a villanelle.

AGENDA FOR A CULL  or  WITNESSES FOR THE PROSECUTION

Seal pups dying,

a culling to complete;

ice caps crying

Bargains wing

around the tourist beat;

seal pups dying

Come spring

craving summer’s heat,

ice caps crying

The done thing

to hit alt-control-delete;

seal pups dying

Words but piling

coals on the global heat;

ice caps crying

G8 (still) trying

to make ends meet;

Seal pups dying,

ice caps crying...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007. 2018

[Note: An earlier version this poem first appears in Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]

Through a Glass Darkly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

An earlier version of this poem as first published in the anthology An Immortal Truth, Poetry Now [Forward Press] 2000 and subsequently in my first collection the following year.

The original version was written in 1984 following a discussion with several peers about how awful we were sometimes when we were children and how, whenever we look in memory’s mirror for those halcyon days, maturity invariably summons certain regrets that, in turn, cause cracks to appear...

To see “through a glass” (mirror) darkly” is to have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. The expression is often presumed to have come from the writings of Paul, the Apostle who suggests that while we may not see clearly in the Here-and-Now, we will do so at the end of time. 

Alternatively: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12 (I know my Bible, it is a good read, even though I had rejected religion for nature by the age of 11 years.)

Whatever, many if not most children, may well know right from wrong, but lack the experience maturity brings to imagine the broader consequences of either. Ahm yes, but how many of us have the imagination to ever really understand the wider consequences of our actions ...? 

There is a lot to be said for the old adages, two that instantly spring to mind are 'Look before you leap.' and 'A little thought goes a long way.'

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 

In a pretty side street, tree lined,
its children playing hide-and-seek
make plenty din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says
who lives on the ground floor
of an end house whose shiny steps
such fun we slip, towering wall
a thrill to squeal and climb, knowing
yell and fuss, but by the time he’ll rush,
no sign of us

Waving a stick, he’ll bawl us out
and we’ll mouth him back, but not until
the door slams shut. Oh, but kids
at play make no excuses, just din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says,
treading the ground floor of the end house
whose mossy steps so snug we sprawl,
graffiti wall a joy to lean, grubby curtains
a-quiver at our kissing or could it be for all
he’s missing...?

Children gone, traffic enough
to wake the dead, the old man said
who lived that shabby room
whose crabby gloom we never spared;
brave wall, a sorry spread,
no curtains (windows boarded up instead)
ghosts playing hide-and-seek
with eternity facing a bleak affinity
for wings circling the last tree left standing,
cracks in a mirror appearing

 Uncomfortable truths, a cruelty enduring

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2011