The Election by Sitakant Mahapatra

By King Meera -
Painful and helpless situation of voters - angst, frustration
Questionable morality, ethics of rally men

http://cuenglias.blogspot.in/2015/03/the-election-sitakant-mahapatra.html

Our jeep crawls to your village
seeking strange melodies
get attention from people. All the promises are built from songs
from the roaring sun:
'the common will'
drawn out by politicians
from the criss-cross geometry
geometry always symmetric
also, smaller problems filtered for larger ones
of private agonies.

Our dark longings don't touch you,
ulterior motives hidden
nor our trappings
of posters, symbols, speeches, handbills,
for your grief outlives empires.
metaphor: how deep, how lasting their grief is

 The cold grandchildren
awaken in your heart
as you discern
All speeches, posters - people know that all politicians want is to stay in power.
muted allegories
An allegory is an extended metaphor - in the songs and speeches, there is a wide use of rhetoric and of symbols and comparisons to convey an ideal end without explicitly stating
on our ashen faces.

Here the great persuaders
are little things, and not so hidden:
cheap plastic, cheaper nylon,
chairs, posters
dark glasses to blot out the sun.
blot out the sun could refer to their fear of being exposed, so to speak. The sun, here, is the voter. The rally men wear dark glasses to hide the truth-seeing eyes of the voter
freebies handed to the voters
safeguard themselves: empty promise, scared of being revealed

 With one foot in hunger
and the other in the soul,
immediate needs must be fulfilled first
you make your decision:
you cast your vote but don't really have a choice
the anguish of choice.

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