the power of cow in kāśi

cows are like dogs here, curled by the fireplace of death

they look at me in that doggy way – friend-hopeful, disappointment-accustomed, ever-trusting, eating the scraps of the human, pets of the kingdom of kashi, suckling the world’s maw

isn’t it right that cows are sacred, more holy than homo sapiens whose name is dubious? for do they not provide happy meals for the Empire of Hamburger, milk for the only animal who drinks of the breast until death, suffer silently the abattoir and stun gun, lay themselves in thin delicate strips for the aristocracy of kobe niku, curdle for the sweet diversity of cheese, take the flies of the world and sole the feet of the upright, graze the pastures of the wasting earth? all this without complaint, signing no waiver, lacking any charter of freedom, driven from eden without myth, god or iphone. who would not worship? who would not prostrate itself before the power of cow?

cow, who rhymes with wow and now and dao, whose homonym walks in reverse, who holds nothing at its centre with balance, equanimity, this beasty god and gody beast

i see them posing on the steps of the ghats like unassuming divas, depositing sanctified poops like coneless DQ ice cream in the banks of vision, wandering among death beyond concern and rite

and the humans around, hawking, stuffed with self-importance and grief, tilling history like oxen for strange and inedible produce – what are we in our two-legged swill and swirl next to the bovine whom we deign to feign to master; drink, slaughter, eat?

here on the ganga, lotus flowers lit and floating like plucked stygian souls, i see kamadhenu rise. it is not woman who will redeem us. not the mute gods, war. hardly technology or money or even love. it is cow