They Killed Cows. I Killed Them.

In the future we might all be vegetarian,

and this life will seem barbaric the way

a corset was or eugenics. We might look

at this man being secretly recorded, bragging,

They killed cows, I killed them, and wonder,

where was his mother? She might have spoken

of his childhood, how it was poor but decent,

how like that blue god’s mother she too gaped

into her son’s wide gob and saw the universe

once. Or she might have told the story of how

he was led astray by a band of men in uniforms.

Not brownshirts but pleated brownshorts

in which they practiced ideological calisthenics.

How she’s been standing at the crater’s edge

saying, Here, kitty kitty kitty, ever since.

Because this man, her son in the undershirt,

dear cadre, cow vigilante, he’s no gladiolus.

He sighs. Even his mustache is pusillanimous.

Maybe he was a Romeo in school. Maybe

he wields this stick to reclaim what he misses

most about his body, or maybe it’s always been

his dream to squeeze the messy limbs of this country

into a svelte operatic shriek. The camera gives us

a glimpse of his chin dumpling. He will go to jail

a thousand times without passing go, without

stopping to plant a tree or collect clean underwear.

He admits it was wrong to allow his boys to record

the killing. Jai Shri Ram. Silly to leave evidence

behind, even though they always go free,

even though the young lads enjoy it so.

And Qasim? The man they killed,

the green meadow of his life come to this,

didn’t his mother also once confuse the dirt

in his mouth for a galaxy? Didn’t he believe

a dying man had the right to ask for water?

In the future when people complain about how Gandhi

should have made a comeback, when comparisons

are drawn between YouTube and the Upanishads,

will they notice the bystanders in the frame,

their shabby shoes shuffling like lapwings

around the bloody censored blur of Qasim’s body?

Will they speak of the difficulty of watching him

thrash around for an invisible rope to steady

him home, the difficulty of us watching them

watching him being killed?

Or is that an illusion too? The way a magician

might swirl his cape to reveal his assistant

is really a robot. No damage done here, folks!

The way we enter the rooms of our past

like gunshots to say, Surprise, I’m still here.

No point carrying blossoms in your pocket

instead of a meat sandwich. Because even if

you did not walk the earth exultantly, even if

you avoided disposable plates and mourned

every glacier and strung a lattice of pearls

to the giant monument of love, there might still

come a day when you are hauling refrigerators

on a truck, or taking the children to a fair,

and when death arrives you must let him

strap you to a telephone pole, you must look

into his ten-headed face, and say,  Flay, brother, flay.