The Butcher

Varavara Rao
http://www.varavararao.org/en/poetry/butcher.html
I am a vendor of flesh
If you want to call me a butcher
Then that is as you wish
I kill animals daily
I cut their flesh and sell it
Blood to me is a familiar sight
But
It was on that day that
I saw
The real meaning of being a butcher,
That young boy’s blood congealed
In the fear that had gathered in my eyes
His voice went dumb
With the words that would not leave my lips

Daily I kill animals with these hands
Never has the blood touched my heart,
But that day the blood spilled not on the street
But on my heart
Will you wash the blood?

Who among you will extend
A humane hand
And unburden my heart
Of the weight of that horrendous sight?

Six lathis broke on his bones As – in a mad rage –
The butt of the rifle thrashed his body
To pulp

It s mouth struck the policeman’s jaw
They said then
That the prostrate youth had attacked with a knife
And there was an `encounter’

I too kill animals
But I have never hated them,
I do sell flesh
But never and to none have
I sold myself

Blood oozes from
The thousand apertures in his body
The thousand watching eyes are tearful
But his own eyes are dry
Unlike the goat under my knife
He does not shout `Ba ba’
He appears to be looking into tomorrow

Yesterday’s sight
No, it is already the day before yesterday’s
The scene of the bandh of May 15
You cannot drive that memory from me
As long as there is breath in my body

Today I may feel it to you
Because
I cannot hide it within me

Tomorrow
I may hide it within me.
Let them destroy my livelihood
But that child Will haunt me forever.

O, brothers and sisters
We do not kill even a snake like that.
I, who kill goats daily, understood that day
The cruelty that combines and conspires
To take a life

I am a vendor of flesh Yes,
I am a butcher
The meat of sheep and meat of goats
I sell for a living

That minister himself
Gives to policemen Prizes and promotions
Medals and weighty purses
For the taking of human lives
That the minister means the government
That the police are our guardians
Whose government it is and
Whose guardians they are
The life of that boy
Fleeing into eternity
Told me
I realized then that
The real butcher is
The state

9 June 1985 Translated by K Balagopal