THE BEGGAR WITH A BLUE VIOLIN

I’ve seen all sorts of beggars

in my time

but only once did I see a beggar

with a blue violin

I’ve seen praying beggars

screaming beggars

keening beggars

I’ve seen chanting, reciting

wailing beggars

and very, very silent ones

I’ve seen self-mutilated

father-mutilated

mother-mutilated

owner-mutilated beggars

I’ve seen babies forced to beg

I’ve had a thousand snot-nosed

fly-infested infants thrust at me

from Fez to Samarkand and Qom

I’ve shaken hands with African

leper beggars but shook their

palms, the fingers having

flaked away

I’ve been serenaded by a handless

child who played a tin drum

tapping out the rhythm with

his elbows

I’ve been begged at on trams and buses

in trucks and cars and cabs

on trains and pavements

in rivers and fields

on elephants and camels too

in wind and monsoon

in heat that haunts

But only once have I seen a beggar

with a blue violin

I’ve seen beggars with elephant faces

animal hooves and dreadful

malformations of their loins

I’ve seen horrors which ceased

in time, to shock

k

I’ve seen beggars with most things missing

Sliding, crawling, bouncing

hopping, flopping along

Some on boards with wheels

others on their leathered arses

Beggars wearing gloves on their feet

beggars with sandals on their hands

I’ve seen all-singing, all-dancing

all-shuffling beggars. I’ve seen

beggars living in a world of dust

I’ve seen beggars beg while shitting

their stools the colour of jaundice

beggars begging in their sleep

others in a state of trance

Only once, however, did I see

a beggar with a blue violin

In Bombay I fed an epileptic beggar boy

convulsing on a platform

My fellow passengers mocked me

They thought I was a fool

Later, when I saw him stroll about

the station, smoking beedis, I understood

that convulsions were his speciality

and didn’t care

In Africa I was begged at by a strong

boy who let his naked cock hang out

of his shredded rags to speed the

business up while  playing madness

in an invented tongue

A white policeman screamed at him

and sent him on his way

Madness leapt from side to side

from black to white and back again

But, in those days, I’d never seen

a beggar with a blue violin

I’ve been sworn at, spat on, cursed

by people. Not by beggars

I’ve been abused and attacked by

traders. I’ve been blessed by beggars

Once, in England, I was given two quid

by one

Sometimes I’ve encountered saintliness

After several months of travelling among

the beggars of India, I came across a man

whose leg was so deformed that it

travelled in multiple directions

Back and forth it went, and round about

It was like the gnarled roots of a troubled

tree

He only won second prize, though

because the next street held the human

torso, smiling in the dirt

No arms, no legs, not the glimmer of

a limb

Just a smile, framed around the begging

basket in his teeth

That day I saw a woman with an elephant’s

face, and I thought her normal – almost

lucky

It was in Java, though, that I encountered

the beggar with a blue violin

I’ve seen streams of little boys and girls

leading blind beggars

With a plastic water bottle one of them

tapped out a rhythm on his head

It gave him something to do

Another chewed an empty can

Blindness always at their shoulder

I’ve seen the beggar children play as well

while their blind masters slept

They were almost children for a while...

It was on a train in Java that I saw

the beggar with a blue violin

Earlier that day had come a little boy

whose withered leg laid across his thigh

as he dragged himself along the floor

on hands and arse, his withered leg

so thin that his shorts flapped loosely

leaving his little naked cock to dangle

in the dust

Next came a glimpse of this boy’s future

a man of fifty, his withered leg across his

thigh, he dragged himself across the grime

on hands and leathered arse and looked

up into our eyes

We fumbled in our pockets

Then came the beggar with a blue

violin

Painted vivid blue, except the strings

it caught my eye and  made me ask myself

Egyptian blue, Brandeis blue, Dodger blue or

azure? It confused me. I even thought of

International Klein Blue, but knew it couldn’t

be, not here in Java

He was blind, the beggar. Perhaps he’d

painted it himself. Maybe he thought it was

brown like other violins, but it wasn’t

It was bright blue – yes, that was the colour –

bright, bright blue. Like a rich sky

or a vulgar mosque. The kind of blue

that keeps mosquitoes at bay

The sound it made was only half music

Something between a drunken Irish jig

an Islamic wail and a bourrée

Between but never one of them

The thing about the beggar with a blue

violin and his blindness was this:

to give him money you had to stop him

playing

It meant touching him

waiting for him to stop

placing a coin in his bow hand

touch, wait, place...

It did no harm to art, of course

you were no visitor from Porlock

but you had to do your bit

You had to get up, lurch over

tap his body, wait for the music

to stop, thrust money into his hand

and lurch back while the train

thundered across Java

hoping someone hadn’t nicked

your seat

Meanwhile the beggar with a blue

violin was transferring the money from

his bow hand to his shirt pocket

while gripping the blue violin in his

other hand

Then he’d play his strange music again

until someone else tapped him

I sat back on my hard seat and looked out

of the filthy window at the beggars’ huts

below

I thought about the thousands of

beggars I had seen during my life

the millions of them living out there

beyond train windows

I remembered the toys I had seen

their children playing with

the rubbish we discard and wouldn’t

let our dogs play with

I thought about the things they eat

and how they eat it through their

mutilations

They’ll be with us forever

I told myself

because the rich will never go away

They are cloning, both...

And as I listened to the blind man

playing his jig, wail, bourrée

I thought about the law of averages

and realised that somewhere else