Political Poem - Prabahan Shakya

Here
On this corner of the street
Stood a madman who never moved,
Who lived
Bare-bodied and sans inhibition.

He put his chair
On the crack on the sidewalk and read newspapers he got for free. 
He didn't wear the religious robe,
The daily langar food sufficed.

There wasn't any shop next to the spot
Until there soon was: a meat shop.
The meat-seller was kind and the two men would smile,
Unbothered by each other's existence.
"He doesn't stand on my entrance does he?"
he said when inquired
by the banker who couldn't stand his
nine-months old doll puking on him again that morning. 

In April came the monsoon and the storm,
But the old man on the street would still never move as he stood
Bare bodied and sans inhibition.
So they said
"How could he not even sleep?"
"How could he never fall sick?"
"How could he not put a shirt on?"
"How could they allow him?"
And then came July with the summer's rage
The man now drenched in sweat
And sat bare bodied,
and now they said
"Oh now he stinks! "
" Ma, do I need to pay coins"
" Honey can we please go the other way? "
"Is he a molester? "
But somehow they couldn't do without his sight.
The silent pariah marked the city of the dead,
The man had such settled eyes,
that every person who cared to look enough
believed that maybe be was free,
"...a little more than me."

The city filled in no time
With big shops, sad men and shady bars
Lovers making love in lone cars
Kids ruining rich walls with glass shards
Mobile hearts born and run in credit cards

In curses in the name of the whore, 

In fights for just an onion more,
Silence in the city took a toll;
In a world of escalators
Some preferred the stairs
Just to feel in control.

Every beautiful thing stays beautiful only if it changes. 
But the old man never moved.

But on that Monday
the street which was used
to the music of blaring horns
couldn't stand them that evening
as the cars were stopped
by a crowd
outside the meat shop.
The old man lay bare-bodied,
sans inhibition
and sans a heartbeat,
lay still with blood on his body
and tire marks on the edge of his skin.

The meat-seller raised alarm,
And the ripples caught on.
And every nerve in the city
Turned throbbing by dawn.
And they said
"Is this the plight of the common man, a man who can't ?!"
"Are we to accept the sight of the everyday, silent unacknowledged deaths?"
"It's somehow uneasy to not see him here."
"Why can't a man be happy and live in peace and
Piece by piece misfit moral codes get in line
And so do the stories
On every placard,
on every shirt
on every crevice
of the city unheard
The name the fame and the glory
of the old man who never moved
came to be donned
Like all that was ever true
The city saw a march it had never seen
The city saw tears it had never seen.
The city saw the patriots it had never seen.
The city stood to be the city it had never been.

And in a few months time,
In the glory of the saintly madman who never moved
the pious made an enormous statue in his memory-
"Here
On this corner of the street
Stood a grand man who never moved,
Who lived
Bare-bodied and sans inhibition."

But in the process,
they demolished the nearby meat shop
his name was Usman anyway.