21. THE SECRET HORSES OF PETERBOROUGH, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
they are receiving hate mail at the peterborough knackery,
25,000 feet above sea level, for the destruction at the heart of an australian legend,
it takes a certain type of human being to kill a horse for profit,
then to become addicted to it and to kill a hundred million horses in a lifetime,
a lifetime's worth of horse-killing decided upon,
some were solitary, limping on the hard compacted dirt, trodden down,
others had formed herd hierarchies and short term friendships,
they all starved and were thirsty in the outdoor waiting room,
the head manager said, 'what we do with the horses is our business and ours only',
there were five diseased camels, slack in the neck, too defeated to graze,
the guy at the post office said, 'camels were on last week',
now the horses and camels looking at me from the colour slides are all dead,
the plant manager wouldn't tell me anything, no photos inside or outside,
then no answering questions,
but we all know what they are doing, the bastards, hush, sshhh, silence,
it's a very sensitive industry,
'we have to watch our backs and so they should, horse-killers,
there's a definite South Australian feeling to it, suppression of information leaving the knackery,
'what's that smoke?' 'you're good aren't you? '
'well it ain't firewood you're burnin' in there buddy,'
the racing industry is largely responsible for horses living out the rest of their lives
as mince, out the back in the holding yards, barren, straw and dust,
dozens of children's dreams left unattended, crippled legs, shaggy manes,
i want to get all those horses and take them home, as life long companions, gorgeous browns,
the strict chill in the crunchy sugar of the bones of horses,
a wind that howls down the bare sides of those frosty gullies,
horses stand in the holding yards freezing to death at night,
frozen to the bone, it sinks in, a cold that penetrates and aches,
long grasses are blown towards sunset inbetween those hills,
down along the windy road the rabbits follow the heat down,
thornbills hop in the mistletoe as the frost comes up to settle,
this is winter in south australia where the horses are slaughtered,
filmy-eyed horses that have seen too much, transportation truck survivors
privately concealed, the secrecy surrounding the operation,
the gaunt moon, clandestine horses, confidential, quiet,
these starving limping horses, with sores on their fine strong legs,
it's all hush-hush,
from the distance i saw the horse whip being lifted to move unwilling horses
into the process and horses rearing up, i saw their long manes and large heads
thrown up and knew that their hooves would be smashing down,
they did not want to go in,
i look down at my own forearms, chest cavity, hands, thighs, muscles, bones, blood
racing through the organs, in moments i will be chopped down to mince without a head,
this is all i am, what it has down come to, downed like horses, pulped for profit,
the secret horses of peterborough; minutes later
they were viewing the slaughter of the horses in front,
seconds later, choking on their own blood, they die silently, then are thick smoke,
they are horses unpublished, encoded, cryptic,
i will find the information on the exhausted outskirts, of horses with no hope,
the humps of camels, in the bare distance, that rose above the barrier,
silhouetted on their way into the process,
nobody wants to get to know a scraggly old camel
and these tired, mangy horses, no-body's pets, no child's dream anymore,
the horse butchers knew well to guard their secret,
the slaughter of horses slaughters some dream inside all of us,
there is something about a horse-killer,
i live for beauty only to find it being destroyed by the knackery,
everything is falling into it, everything,
the bare hills of peterborough, the heart of the town,
for although it is situated on the outskirts, as most places of massacre are,
the town is dragged into it sideways, sneakily, unwillingly,
the metro meatworks is not out far enough to be hushed up,
the stench of horse flesh wafts in from the street,
we smell the camels falling, the trees fall into it,
the men's hearts who operate it fall in,
and they are spiritually mangled, by their own machinery,
the world should know about the gulping knackery,
here life is not awarded the simplest curiosity, compassion is obsolete,
the horse-killer bosses with mobile phones are on planes from adelaide
to perth and sydney for board meetings, they are professionals; yet simply
horse-killers and the meetings contain profit from agony,
life means nothing to them, why must it always appear that hate and evil have
the upper hand, that horses will ultimately be disadvantaged?
all i am is flesh and bone, a lover of horses,
the horse-killers can't see beyond their own greed and stupidity,
i want them to go down, to be trampled by hooves of horses going in,
i want the last thing they see, to be those secret hills, their own hostile machinery,
i want their flesh as frost, the rabbits and sheep to crush it down,
the sun the next morning to bring it up, until it is made pure, morning good,
i got depressed and trusted no-one for a few days after that,
went to bed early to escape the knackery, it was deeply cold,
the wind howled late into the night and into the early hours,
i woke up the next morning and knew of its existence again,
on the way into peterborough, the bare sheep exposed to the elements on those hills,
was just a lead-in to a greater cruelty,
the head manager said that horses arrived from everywhere at any time,
he wouldn't tell me things a primary school child would know, hostility and suspicion,
he was nervous about the tree types,
about the stench of horse blood running through the office,
faint traces in the tea and biscuit tin,
he said, 'sorry we couldn't help you with more information,
but we received hate mail, when we started doing horses,'
the horses would see the two-legged creeps, the knife man coming, the humming, rock'n'roll
transistor, before the quick slide into blood and terror,
'not killing 'em, no, we do 'em, we do 'em good and proper,'
peterborough is wrapped up in it and this must affect it,
its horses, its children, its town spirit |
