Light

Light

A Poem BY C. K. WILLIAMS

Another drought morning after a too brief dawn downpour,
unaccountable silvery glitterings on the leaves of the withering maples—

I think of a troop of the blissful blessed approaching Dante,
“a hundred spheres shining,” he rhapsodizes, “the purest pearls…”

then of the frightening brilliants myriad gleam in my lamp
of the eyes of the vast swarm of bats I found once in a cave,

a chamber whose walls seethed with a spaceless carpet of creatures,
their cacophonous, keen, insistent, incessant squeakings and squealings

churning the warm, rank, cloying air; of how one,
perfectly still among all the fitfully twitching others,

was looking straight at me, gazing solemnly, thoughtfully up
from beneath the intricate furl of its leathery wings

as though it couldn’t believe I was there, or were trying to place me,
to situate me in the gnarl we’d evolved from, and now,

the trees still heartrendingly asparkle, Dante again,
this time the way he’ll refer to a figure he meets as “the life of…”

not the soul, or person, the life, and once more the bat, and I,
our lives in that moment together, our lives, our lives,

his with no vision of celestial splendor, no poem,
mine with no flight, no unblundering dash through the dark,

his without realizing it would, so soon, no longer exist,
mine having to know for us both that everything ends,

world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away
like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain.

Shame

Shame

A Poem BY
C. K. WILLIAMS

A girl who, in 1971, when I was living by myself, painfully lonely, bereft, depressed,
offhandedly mentioned to me in a conversation with some friends that although at first she’d found me—
I can’t remember the term, some dated colloquialism signifying odd, unacceptable, out-of-things—
she’d decided that I was after all all right ... twelve years later she comes back to me from nowhere
and I realize that it wasn’t my then irrepressible, unselective, incessant sexual want she meant,
which, when we’d been introduced, I’d naturally aimed at her and which she’d easily deflected,
but that she’d thought I really was, in myself, the way I looked and spoke and acted,
what she was saying, creepy, weird, whatever, and I am taken with a terrible humiliation

Learning Self Glorification

Emulating the leader is not a new phenomenon but to the extent of self-glorification is rare.

There is altleast one soldier of the blue-brigade who had vowed to follow his leader (read Mayawati) by getting his statue built and erected during his life time.

A BSP worker and listed criminal of Bhadohi in Sant Ravidas Nagar, Jagannath Prasad Bind aka Khunti, is the person who wanted to get immortalised by getting his own statue installed on the lines of party chief Mayawati.

Khunti had 30 criminal cases registered against him and even Gangster Act and Goonda Act had also been invoked against him.

Stepping into the shoes of his leader, an ambitious Jagannath got his own statue built dittoing the posture of Mayawati with an extended palm while waving to her supporters during BSP rallies.

Sculptor of this statue Jai Prakash Bind is also a local BSP leader in Bhadohi who had bagged three more similar orders from the blue brigade workers.

However, Jagannath’s statue is neatly placed at his house in Rampur Basanhi village under Koirauna police station and he is eagerly awaiting the unveiling ceremony followed by a ‘panchayati bhoj’ (community feast) which is likely to take place next month. Some senior BSP leaders of the district were also invited to the function.

Speaking over mobile phone from his village, Jagannath told, "I have requested Education Minister Rang Nath Mishra and newly-elected Bhadohi MP Gorakh Nath Pandey to unveil my statue. But now it is getting late as people from neighbouring villages have already started visiting my house to see the statue."

Incidentally, Chief Minister Mayawati recently unveiled six of her own statues in state capital this month. As per state government figures, it has spent Rs 3.49 crore on Mayawati’s eight statues at five memorials coming up in the state capital.
It spent another Rs 3.37 crore on seven statues of BSP founder Kanshi Ram.

The largest statue of Mayawati and Kanshi Ram have already been installed by the government at Bhimrao Ambedkar Samajaik Parivartan Sthal in the state capital. The two 24-ft high bronze statues cost Rs1.55 crore each.

But Jagannath was confident of his connections in the party and did not find his tainted past a hindrance in his plans.

"Right from 1980 when I was elected gram pradhan of my village, I am being implicated in false cases by influential persons in area who can not see Dalits being empowered", he said.

"The party leaders know that I am not a criminal but a victim of local politics, so I don’t see any reason that they will not oblige me by unveiling my statue," he added.

Jagannath, who claims to have shunned the ways of crime long ago, says, "I just wish to be remembered by people after my death. How can such an aspiration be wrong?" he questioned.