Welcome to this place; the end of all hope;
May be heaven’s gates are permanently opened over this place,
I am a herbivore: I have harmed none, yet, I have been bred on a diet of grass and stale feed,
My mother works in the stocks, forced to make milk; her udders clamped to pumps draining her till all strength in her is gone,
My father was sent away soon after my half-siblings and I were born,
Some were taken from us at a young age to the Great House, from where none return
I was fed & fed, until my legs strain to keep up my bulky frame to rival a Belgian Blue,
And, I was led to join this final queue- from where (like all who preceded me) I do not expect to return;
In the stockades of a night the sorrowful ballad of fellow captives sing songs of a better place, a better time, a proud ancestry (is it a fever-fuelled dream or was it ever real?),
No matter, it’s all over now:
The final embrace of the Life-Stealer awaits me; he will make it quick & painless as possible, it is said among the kettled herds;
For a man used to killing for his daily bread is not, as a rule, habitually cruel,
Great Lord of the Plains, whatever I come back as, I have one small request:
Let it not be as human:
For, while they may make me into meat and eat of me, I would like not to be of them;
Admittedly, I have not seen them at their best;
But, whatever this might be-
I have truly come to abhor their general casual neglect.