This is a poem written by a Russian poet called Sergei Esenin in 1915. I thought it was beautiful. I read it when I was 18, just turned vegetarian and it made me so incredibly sad, the pictures of this cow were forever ingrained in my brain and I promised myself to never put any kind of dead flesh in my mouth ever again. Being vegan is perhaps a step further for most people, but if you feel for the animals it’s not a hard step to take, especially in most European countries (but of course, eating vegan is easy in most places). This story, documented in 1915 is not much different from how it is nowadays. Cows don’t just ‘give’ milk. Just like humans and other mammals their milk is meant for their babies, meaning a cow has to get impregnated, give birth, after which the calf just gets taken away, mostly to become veal, and then there is a limited amount of time that the cow will ‘give milk’ until she has to go through this disgusting procedure again. By the time the cow is 5 or 6 years old (a cow can live up to 20 years), they are completely ‘depleted’ and are slaughtered for second grade beef.
lyrics
Дряхлая, выпали зубы,
Свиток годов на рогах.
Бил ее выгонщик грубый
На перегонных полях.
Сердце неласково к шуму,
Мыши скребут в уголке.
Думает грустную луму
О белоногом телке.
Не дали матери сына,
Первая радость не прок.
И на колу под осиной
Шкуру трепал ветерок.
Скоро на гречневом свее,
С той же сыновней судьбой,
Свяжут ей петлю на шее
И поведут на убой.
Жалобно, грустно и тоще
В землю вопьются рога...
Снится ей белая роща
И травяные луга.
Cow
Infirm, fallen out teeth,
An aging scroll on her horns.
The rude farmer would hit her
On the pasting fields.
Heart is unkind to the noise,
The mice are screeching in the corner.
Conducting sad thoughts
About a white-legged calf.
Son take away from the mother,
First ever joy to waste.
And his fur will be trembling
On a pole under a beech tree.
Soon on the buckwheat plantation,
Destined just like her son,
A noose will be put round her neck
To lead her to slaughter.
Pitiful, bitter and meager
The horns bite into the dust...
She’s dreaming of a white grove
And grassy fields.
The songs on the latest from Worriers hurtle forward breathlessly, with hook after hook topped by scorching vocal melodies. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 16, 2023
Angey, messy, hardcore feminist punk. I feel like the band memvers would sneer at you if you tried to talk to them in a bar.
Make your parents mad, buy this album Isabelle Hamel