dVerse Poets Open Link Night “After It’s Fallen”
This is an older poem about the burning ghat in Varanasi (Benares), India. The picture above is by Diana Barco, from a book of my poetry called Going on Somewhere. I am posting it for dVerse Poets Pub open link night as well as the Poetry Palace Poets Rally and for Victoria C. Slotto’s blog, liv2write2day (for a prompt about memory.) All are great resources for poets and those who love poetry.
After it’s fallen
In Benares, the tenders rake the fallen feet back into the flames.
The first time we watched them, I was horrified.
How you would know that foot, I kept thinking,
your father’s soft purply big-veined foot.
My father’s feet have always seemed too small to me.
When he walks he seems to go on edge, as if they
can hardly carry him.
The toes of his shoes turn up strangely,
even after he’s had them just one week,
Something from the war, he’s always said.
In Benares, the feet are the last parts to be burned.
They overhang the pyre and simply
wait there, smoking slowly
until the shins are completely charred.
Their full flesh too heavy for the burned legs,
they fall, eventually, to the ground.
They never fall together, but one first, pointing randomly,
the other still flexed in the air.
When one of the tenders notices, he
pushes the fallen foot back into the flames.
He uses two long poles, the
green bamboos of the bier.
Sometimes he has to lever the foot
to reach the flames again, crossing the poles
like huge chopsticks.
They have dark feet in Benares,
darker than my father’s would be,
smooth and brown.
I couldn’t stop looking at them, thinking how you would know
that foot on the ground there, that foot.
Tags: After it's fallen, Diana Barco drawing, Going On Somewhere, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, poem about father, poem about India, poem about Varanasi burning ghat's
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ManicDDaily 
January 3, 2012 at 5:20 pm
damn…wow…interesting…would be rather surreal to watch this…
January 3, 2012 at 11:28 pm
Yes. I don’t know what it is like now, as the last time I was there was some time ago. K.
January 3, 2012 at 7:16 pm
Whoa. reminds me of that Magritte pic of the feet that are boots, or vice versa–very evocative of a person–though they are rather neglected body parts in the poetic lexicon. Very well built poem.
January 3, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Haunting image, but I like the feet.
January 3, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Powerful poem!
January 3, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Powerful and disturbing piece.
January 3, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Hi Karin– this poem absolutely makes me ache– so rich in pierce the heart and boggle the mind detail… what an intensely compelling image to have in your arsenal.
The toes of his shoes turn up strangely,
even after he’s had them just one week,
Something from the war, he’s always said.
such a piquant, searing and allusive detail.
the green bamboo of the bier might well be a masterful title for another volume of your masterful work– I’ll be trying Finishing Line w/ my Rilke Variations– wait ’til Feb, they said– I hope you will too…xxxj
January 3, 2012 at 10:01 pm
BTW mine is up at La Parola. xj
January 4, 2012 at 12:38 am
dang – this left me sitting with an open mouth… the feet are such an intimate part of the body and i think i would just be terrified if i had to watch this.. very well written k.
January 4, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Karin that’s a profoundly moving poem.
January 5, 2012 at 4:11 am
I found this quite haunting .. watching a body burn is surely a painful part if the its of a dear one..
There is lot of details here making it quite vivid in my mind also as I am from India ..
It ached something in my heart
January 12, 2012 at 4:14 am
You know, this reminds me of something I had written after my trip to Varanasi. I was then a journalist covering the elections and something about the city and the fact that death was so matter of fact there and mere business just knocked the wind out of me.
Very nicely put…
January 12, 2012 at 10:42 am
for me this is hard imagery- being not of my culture it is difficult to imagine your fathers feet- wow-thank you for sharing this
January 12, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Thank you for this interesting enlightenment. Well written.
January 13, 2012 at 8:25 am
Well done. Coming from another culture … I felt almost as if I had been spying upon you and I read the poem … as though perhaps I should not have been looking, as though I had been disrespectful. I enjoyed this piece. Thank you.
January 14, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Interesting and thought provoking!
January 19, 2012 at 1:35 pm
OMG, this is so well written but chilling. I think a persons feet tell stories. Sometimes I stop to think of where mine have led me…some places praiseworthy, others, not so. You poem is so good, Karin. I commented on your comment on my blog.
January 20, 2012 at 3:19 am
Karin, all kinds of emotion are aroused by this story poem. On one level, astonishment at the down-to-earth nature of the funeral ceremony, with sympathy for the mourners, and on another, recognition of that truth “by their feet shall we know them”
January 20, 2012 at 1:33 pm
really heavy imagery
January 21, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Powerfully done, rich imagery. I was there. Memories like this endure so don’t they. I had to stop myself writing about my late husband on the life support machine. I didn’t really want to go through those feelings again. But writing just after the event is probably theraputic to get the grieving out.