The Destruction of Animals
... simile is convey in, “There are knives that glitter like alters / In a dark church / Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile / To be healed” (9-12). Those lines triggers an unpleasant picture to the reader, “the church” is the “butcher shop,” the “cripple and the imbecile,” is the lame and stupid animals, but the animals aren’t there “To be healed,” they are there to be killed. At the end of the “Butcher Shop,” Simic associate himself to the poem and the shop as he is describing it as a place, “Where I am fed” (15). Simic portrays the “Butcher Shop” as a place of destruction, as place of horror for animals, but he consume the animals, and now there is a consciousness of guilt, “Where deep in the night I hear a voice,” (16). The poet has the reader thinking that the “Butcher Shop” is the foe, but he is the enemy. There is no protection for the little pig in Levine’s poem; “Animals Are Passing from Our Lives.” This little pig is on his way to the “market,” (5) who thoughtfully observe himself with pride and beauty, this is convey in the following lines, “It’s is wonderful how I jog / on four honed-down ivory toes / my massive buttocks sipping / like oiled parts with each light step” (1-4). The poet language goes into detail in this poem and allows the reader to believe that the little pig is arrogant and determine to see his destruction through, but he won’t do it his master way, “squeal / and shit like a new housewife” (19-20). No, this little pig is going to die his own way, with dignity, “Not this pig” (24). The poet use of tactile image is conveying when the little pig can imagine the smell “the sour, grooved block,”...