| GRR Doubts of a scientist To understand was first to be In possession of a PhD It was required to pass this test With a steady hand through animal flesh Learning was motive enough, besides You used to think with a sense of pride That your work could some day save some lives That could seem to justify Each monkey under your knife It's funny how a speck of doubt Can cloud your life's achievements out Heads, shoulders, knees, toes and eyes and ears and mouth and frontal lobe, what marks us out? Language, society, so what? Guns and thumbs, that's all we've got. It wasn't books that swayed your mind Nor thoughts of an academic kind But a certain look in its eyes Just enough to make you think twice Because no one is desensitised Cut you up, what differences would one find With an ape of a similar size So why should it be that feelings Are only human sorts of things And who can say there is no pain Only chemicals in a rat's brain What set of jeans has given you the right to make decisions over an animal's life and what price to put on smooth human skin when weighed up against animal suffering? Seeing a body lain out cold You wondered idly wherein lay the soul And if it could be dissected Or cured if it were infected For all your testing of shampoo You know we are animals too To understand was first to be In possession of a PhD It was required to pass this test With a steady hand through animal flesh Learning was motive enough, besides You used to think with a sense of pride That your work could some day save some lives That could seem to justify Each monkey under your knife It's funny how a speck of doubt Can cloud your life's achievements out You once believed that we were a cut above, that people held the keys to the earth. But for all the organs that you've sliced through, it's plain that people are animals too. BACK |