Vegan Poetry

A few instants of a sow’s life

She cannot see the sky nor the stars,
Though she only dreams of seeing the trees,
To feel a bit of sunshine on her skin,
And be as free as the flies.
She dreams of escaping the dark,
Of understanding why she’s here,
If there is an ending
And better places to be in.
There’s truly a lot we can take
Guided by the instant desires we crave,
But behind the barriers of a cage
There’s a sow hoping for better days.

And as there’s no peace she can see
She will close her eyes to be free.

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Through this poem I started to imagine a sow’s fate in a factory farm and her desire to just “feel life” for a moment: fresh air, sunlight and being able to observe a tiny bit of nature. She will never physically experience freedom, however, when she closes her eyes, to find a little escape in her own dreams or to fall asleep forever, no one can stop her from being free.

Lena Tschauder is French-German and grew up between both countries. Since childhood, her parents taught her the importance of every individual, even the smallest insect. However, it’s only several years later that she became vegan, in 2019, after volunteering for an animal rights organisation and watching the documentary “Earthlings”. The kind of activism she has recently explored is the combination of animal rights with creative writing. Her vegan poems have been published at the Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Críticos Animales in Spanish and exhibited at the The Art of Compassion project in English at a charity event. She seeks to invite everyone to explore more of their sensitivity and to take their time to observe the uniqueness of each non-human animal.