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Even Cows Need Milk of Human Kindness
The sky is all bleak-
Not a sliver of cloud
To promise rain
To give reason to live
To the single cow
Standing limp amid
Bodies of many
Of its kind
At the holding grounds
Of the Kenya Meat Commission
At the Athi River Abattoir.
Amid the many cows lying dead
Or waiting for death
In instalments,
A lone nomad is uncowed
To keep one bold-eyed cow alife-
Perhaps his today's dollop of hope;
And i recall when i was
A small boy that papa
Used to shed a tear or more
For every single cow that succumped
To the vagaries of drought
As if they had souls.
And i knew how he had weathered
The pains and rains of sweat
To build up a herd of 200
That could be
Decimated by the decrepitude
Of a worrisome weather;
Not these butchers of bulls
And hungry cows of the
Athi River sloughterhouse;
They who do not empathize
With the pain
Of hungry cows, not bothered
To provide them
Fodder or water
To refuel their nerves
Before they face the knife.
The dead or the dying
Are shoved in shallow mass
Graves like solid grime,
Only for these vultures, maraboustocks,
Dogs, hyenas and all types of scavengers
To exume the carcases to a dungheap of
Flies, filth and stench.
No wonder one animal activist raved:
It is a kind of cows holocaust-
Callous, cruel and despicable;
They may not have souls,
But even dying cows need
Milk of human kindness.
