Awfully January

Part One: I Feel a Change Comin’ On


As drunkards shout for power
The power of itsy-bitsy nothingness
On the powerless streets
For the dictatorship of the donkeys
I feel a change comin’ on;

all these days I have been only waiting
In the passage inside my place of drainage
All these days I have been only waiting
For the next thousand days for more blood and gore
I do feel a change comin’ on.

They yell again to make it special
The beginning of the festival is marked here
—The festival of the fools,
With the loud merrymaking of bombs
I feel a change comin’ on.



Part Two: Of the People, On the Election


I hit the road as the festive moods prevail
There are going to be folks who are interested
Even if I'm interested in none of them
For the plastic dawn we dream of seeing in the horizon
And standing under a banyan, all I saw was Bose
And I talked to him, he had got the day's first dose
So strange he is not like a drinker like all of us
In this cold January morning
He had managed to get a shot of heroin
With the money he got from flogging
The defunct electric pole and wires near the Nambul
to the scrap dealer who came all the way from Bihar,
He convinced me we can get the present government back
All he need is three free shots a day till the election day
Then a job here, a' rob there, he needs them, he added
But he turned pale tho' he was so high
When I told him the government is dead.