Tonight a lamb was
born. A female, with a black face and
spots, and a tiny, bleating voice. Her
mother is a ewe from Sicilia (and therefore is named Cicilia), and this was her
first pregnancy. As soon as I saw the
newborn lamb—just minutes after she came into the world—I felt uplifted because
I believed that she, unlike the many male lambs that have been born this week,
would live a long, happy life in the poppy and clover-filled pastures here at
the azienda. However, I have just discovered that I am
mistaken. She too will have her throat cut by Domenico and end up on somebody’s
table on Easter Day.
This knowledge has
spurred an internal moral discussion that I will attempt to explain. When one raises sheep, or any other animal
that is used for products, one must
be prepared to play God. As far as I can
see it, sheep prior to domestication roamed Italy freely with only predation,
illness, infant mortality, and natural disaster as their threats to life. When
a person raises sheep for milking, their job is to eliminate all of these
threats to ensure that they keep their products
alive and healthy. (That is not to say that the people here do not emotionally
connect with their sheep. By products I mean their livelihood.) With
these threats removed, the sheep population would be out of control in a few
short years. The solution is that some sheep must die. It is, of course, as sad
thing to imagine when you see a tiny, speckled lamb tottering around on its
four spindly legs mewing for its mother moments after its birth, but Antonio
has consoled me by reminding me that sheep do not experience time, especially
as sense of the future, like we do.
This newborn lamb is not living a doomed life, for she will continue to live
out her time (one month, perhaps two) in the pasture, surrounded by other sheep
in the Mediterranean sun until the moment Domenico bleeds her out. My shock
at her being a female and condemned
to Easter dinner is born from the question: why not use her for milk? Like I
said before, however, if all female sheep were kept for milk, our 130 sheep
would become 200, then 400 within a matter of years. Instead of wolves or
famine or draught, WE become the wolves and prune the population from
overgrowth.
And somehow, life
goes on. Today, the goat, Amelia, gave birth to twin male kids, whom I have
named Vinnie and Toby. (Vinnie after Vincent Van Gogh, because he has a wonky
ear, and Toby because it sounded right.) Last week, we found a litter of
kittens in the straw bales and every day this week a lamb or two has been
born. It is springtime and LIFE is all
around us here in Salento.
Pastures
ReplyDeleteSome who are still alive
grew up in them
and when they could barely walk
ran with sheep
and came to the gate
one time boys watching sheep
in the upland pastures
on the day of the fair
saw a man they knew
come and wait
for a woman they knew
and kill her with a rock
and they hid
under a flowering
honeysuckle
I was taught the word
pasture as though
it came from the Bible
but I knew it named something
with a real sky
one day my mother
and the woman we were visiting
wanted to talk about things
they did not want me to hear
so I walked out past the pig pen
under the apple trees
and the first pigs I had seen
alive
crowded to the corner
to look at me
I passed the barn
where bands of light
reached between the boards
to touch the back of sheep
standing and doing
nothing in the shadow
and went up the green track
to the top of the ridge
and saw the open
pasture sloping
away to the woods
it was another sky
a day of its own
it was the night pasture
as children
we ran among
mounds of rusting ferns
in the long sunset
of an endless summer
our thin voices
spinning across the still pasture
calling each other
and we hid
in the chill twilight
face down hearing out breaths
our own breaths
full of horizon
and the smell of dew
on the cold ferns
even then
in the spring
there were those on earth
who drove flocks
from winter pastures
near the sea
up into the green slopes
enclosed by woods
in the mountain
they went all together
it took ten days
before they came
to the summer pastures
they said were theirs
full of tall
young grass
many
now do not know
any such thing
-W.S. Merwin
Pastures
ReplyDeleteSome who are still alive
grew up in them
and when they could barely walk
ran with sheep
and came to the gate
one time boys watching sheep
in the upland pastures
on the day of the fair
saw a man they knew
come and wait
for a woman they knew
and kill her with a rock
and they hid
under a flowering
honeysuckle
I was taught the word
pasture as though
it came from the Bible
but I knew it named something
with a real sky
one day my mother
and the woman we were visiting
wanted to talk about things
they did not want me to hear
so I walked out past the pig pen
under the apple trees
and the first pigs I had seen
alive
crowded to the corner
to look at me
I passed the barn
where bands of light
reached between the boards
to touch the back of sheep
standing and doing
nothing in the shadow
and went up the green track
to the top of the ridge
and saw the open
pasture sloping
away to the woods
it was another sky
a day of its own
it was the night pasture
as children
we ran among
mounds of rusting ferns
in the long sunset
of an endless summer
our thin voices
spinning across the still pasture
calling each other
and we hid
in the chill twilight
face down hearing out breaths
our own breaths
full of horizon
and the smell of dew
on the cold ferns
even then
in the spring
there were those on earth
who drove flocks
from winter pastures
near the sea
up into the green slopes
enclosed by woods
in the mountain
they went all together
it took ten days
before they came
to the summer pastures
they said were theirs
full of tall
young grass
many
now do not know
any such thing
-W.S. Merwin