Cynomachy is forbidden by law
those dogs are no robots, they don’t have
tubes and hydraulic pumps inside
but real veins and if you cut them
when the blood trickles out
they suffer, and truly, like dogs,
because today animals, in Europe,
are a juridical subject, though vaguely
defined. Instead, if you make cockroaches
fight, directing them between boundaries
of poison, or you hypnotize them with spray,
or if you flog a pigeon, nobody
will punish you, because a silent
pain, without its transparent
theater, is an insufficiently
convincing hypothesis.
Thus, even those beyond many seas
and mountains, in their cloud
of sand, with flies on their abdomens,
the hot concrete. When called
they turn towards the lenses slit-eyed:
for the occasion they try to utter
a dutiful silent cry.