Kaptah

 

Not the thing

That proves to bloodless machines

We are, indeed, human

But a character in

A novel so sad

With beauty,

The sting, the agony of tragedy

 

He is not the hero

Not a villain

For a foil

He exists, and his motivation

Is self-interest,

Which is to say, he’s like us

A common man

Is he common woman?

 

Early on, he is a servant,

And he steals enough to keep his job

While his hiding places are secure

The protagonist forgets

About him in the midst of terror

And sadness for the state

And for one’s own

 

A common man

Is he a common woman?

One day, when few surprises remain,

Kaptah is found, fat and wealthy

Lording it over his own

All is otherwise destruction

And reimagined chaos

For certain things go on

Only on the next generation’s form

 

He doesn’t care

He has his own

 

Glamour, glitz, tastelessness of

Rococo (not rococo itself)

He is fashionably grotesque

(relation to the living is not

coincidental)

 

There is a promise that comes across

While reading as

Demon-mischief, say,

To those who want to co-create a better world

That Kaptah will endure

Enjoy the excesses of each day

To die in bed one day

Surrounded, if not

Barricaded,

By many wealthy status-things

He might know the illusion

And the lesson

Again, he will not care

 

For he is the common man

Is he the common woman,

I don’t know

 

C L Couch

 

The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

 

 

The Common Man by R K Laxman at Symbiosis Institute, Pune.

Hari Prasad Nadig – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnadig/5537675936, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38047206