FOR ANIMALS Poem by Luís Quintais

For animals eternal Treblinka



The memory I've been given is rife with martyrdom.
Mother took me by the hand. We had reached the sacrificial perimeter. The
sound of chickens facing the end. Their innocent clucking. The hushed violence of
exposed carcasses. Guts, the stench of screaming guts. Fury and sound collapsed into rottenness. There were stands within the
perimeter calling for truth and commerce. The plump, flayed meats lightly swayed,
hanging from large metal hooks. Soaked feathers littered the ground. A decapitated
chicken embraced the world. Narrow furrows inside the perimeter carried off the blood
to a place I imagined to be far away, as far as a faraway country.
The guttural agony subsided. People were drawing their drapes for the peaceful
midday meal.