Octavio Pineda - Animal SOS Animal

Animal

S O S

Animal

J. Octavio Pineda

© J. Octavio Pineda

© Taller de Edición • Rocca® S. A. S.

© Ilustración de cubierta / Cover illustration / Illustration des couvertures: Paula Bossio

Primera edición / First edition / Première édition, Taller de Edición • Rocca®

Febrero de 2020 / February 2020 / Février 2020

Bogotá, D. C., Colombia

ISBN impreso / print / impression: 978-958-48-8057-4 (Esp, Eng, Fra)

ISBN digital / électronique: 978-958-48-8058-1 (Esp), 978-958-48-8946-1 (Eng)

Edición y producción editorial / Editing and production / Édition et production éditoriale:

Taller de Edición • Rocca® S. A. S.

Carrera 4aA No. 26A-91, oficina 203

Teléfonos: (57+1) 243 2862 - 243 8591

taller@tallerdeedicion.com

www.tallerdeedicion.com

Bogotá, D. C., Colombia

Editor general / General editor / Éditeur général: Luis Daniel Rocca Lynn

Coordinación editorial / Editorial coordination / Coordination éditoriale: Juanita Rocca Toro

Diseño y diagramación / Design and layout / Design et mise en page: Julieta Arias Muñoz / Juan Pablo Rocca Barrenechea

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hecho en Colombia • Made in Colombia • Fait en Colombie

Literature is my great passion, but all that happens to our beautiful and battered planet is my great concern. For a long time, this has not allowed me to read and write as calmly and joyfully as I would like, as something caught in my throat, which I was able to express in the form of this compendium of seriously endangered species, this collection of animal poems.

Complete ecosystems are being deforested or degraded daily. Thousands of species of flora and fauna are being destroyed or trafficked for absurd purposes, the result of human frivolity or superstition. Plastics flood the oceans. Global warming produces increasingly extreme phenomena, to such degree that the Arctic, for example, has become something sadder than a summer beach, among other very serious problems.

Despite this, the vast majority of people, so unaware that they seem anesthetized, continue to behave as if all this was occurring on another planet and not on this one, which has been and is our only home. And though I have addressed all these challenges in journalistic articles or social media, including possible solutions and success stories, it has not been enough.

So I decided to resort to a straighter language, a more powerful message, giving voice to some of those exotic species, some of those beautiful, cornered animals, that have been with us for thousands of years, even in our fantasies and our dreams, and are seeing their existence increasingly threatened.

Let these brief lines, originally written in three languages that I know well (looking forward to their translation into many others for the message to reach all corners of the planet), work as an SOS from those fantastic creatures that we have not been able to value and need all of our urgent commitment and help, with mitigation and rescue actions, a more sustainable development, and more responsible production and consumption practices.

This reduced number of animal ambassadors is just a tiny representation of the great biodiversity that our planet houses and whose wealth we are squandering.

I am confident that these animal laments will be echoed and, above all, will move to immediate action, because time is running out ... not only for them, but for all of us.

If these cries for help do not move us as humans, nothing will, and we’ll continue forging our own fate, not promising at all in the way we are behaving.

I thought I was the king of the jungle,

until a true tyrant arrived

and took over my domains.

He has cornered me, with all my subjects,

into reserves of fragile borders that shrink day by day.

Like in the courts of medieval castles,

whose walls are often decorated

with portraits of former monarchs,

the hairy heads of my ancestors

adorn as a trophy, as a tribute to ignominy,

the walls of mansions of hunters of prey.

That’s why I now say that I’m the king of nothing.

They say I am a mix of camel and leopard,

but with a very long neck and blunt horns.

My coat is a mosaic

of orange spots apparently stuck with white plaster.

I am the tallest and slenderest of all terrestrial species.

Since ancient times, I have been an easy prey of men,

who have preferred seeing me in zoos or coliseums

to freely running on the African savannahs.

Not even the wildest human imagination

could have conceived me.

I used to strut freely in the sunlight

to feed on the leaves of trees.

But as a precaution now I only go out at night,

and during the day I'd rather hide my head in the ground,

like sage ostriches.

Sitting at the top of this still intact tree,

from the distance I hear the noise of chainsaws,

of heavy machinery,

and how the trunks rumble when falling,

with a tremor of aggrieved, badly hurt jungle.

The last time I confronted a bulldozer

I got seriously injured.

At first my younger, almond–eyed “brothers” just laughed,

as if I were an anecdotal curiosity.

But when they realized I was really upset,

they threw stones and sticks to shoo me.

To foolish words, deaf ears, so I preferred to walk away

and take refuge with my people, or what is left of them.

I ended up with a black eye and two broken ribs

that now make it difficult for me to sigh.

My old curtain fur has not really worked

to keep me hidden and safe from infamous destruction.

That's why I say my fur is more like a weeping willow.

I looked like a living tank – an impenetrable fortress –

equipped not only with armor,

but with a horn-shaped head,

a wonder of self-defense.

But, like Achilles, we all have our heel.

And mine was, precisely, that portentous shaft

that became the target of greed,

of absurd superstition.

In spite of my tremendous muscles,

in many pictures I show myself crying

because since then I already knew

I would be one of the first species to go extinct.

They say the best defense is a good offense,

but in my serenity of peaceful monk I never believed it.

Now it's too late to regret it.

It is of little use to be the largest of all the species

that have lived on Earth:

The bigger you come, the harder you fall,

and my size made me the most vulnerable.

In the first journeys at sea,

the mere sighting of my mass used to frighten seamen,

keeping them at bay; and when they were back at their ports,

they used to exaggerate my size,

describing me as a monster,

as the guardian of unknown waters.

But very soon the planet’s worst predator

overcame the distances of this big water sphere

and also their own fears to then see me

as an endless source of meat, fat and bones