A Cow Amid The Butchers Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

Labour of the day
Made me exhausted,
Rocked into the valley of sleep,
The world of strange happenings,
And I beheld an astonishing object:
A cow, enormous like a mountain,
Around her was a huge gathering
Of men and women, all Lilliputians.

They had sharp instruments,
Knives, axes, choppers, and blades,
Mulberry-baskets, bags of polythene.
From peon to prince,
All working and ruling figures
Of the land were busy in chopping the cow,
And the men in uniforms were having
Their own legitimate shares.

A man with crowned shoulders
And medals on the chest,
Hollered his men to expedite the activity.
A man wearing crown,
Had positioned a ladder,
To reach the belly for boneless meat,
Two stout bald men seemingly brothers,
Supported from both of the sides
Each length of the ladder;
But a mystery was working behind,
The wounds cuts gave healed up instantly.

Some men and women wearing torn clothes
With thin limbs, legs and bony faces
Were waiting for their own turn.

I too had an axe to cut asunder the chops,
But her neck was too high to reach,
And I slobbered with un-slaked desire.
When I abased in front of the Mountain-cow,
She lowered her head in affectionate mode,
As if offering her whole being,
Feeling pity on my miserable plight.

When I looked upwards,
I was speechless on finding a word,
Written in the margin of her forehead,
Painted green and white,
With a crescent and a star,
The word inscribed was ‘Pakistan’.