There was a certain unease 
creating what might 
by all lights and rights 
be considered a fantasy; 
would there be 
a willing suspension of disbelief 
as the English poet said 
or would it make a reader take it 
as a self-indulgent frivolity? 
So to speak, 
the laboring of a mountain or a molehill 
to bring forth a mouse? 
The author getting his rocks off 
under cover of the Pierian Spring 
or from Rachele’s shaky remembrance 
of Gandhi and his goat 
at the Villa Torlonia. 

Let’s find out. 

That December, met at his special train, 
Gandhi, not yielding to Fascist persuasion 
to accept hospitality at the Palazzo Venezia, 
sits stubborn in his fancy carriage 
waiting for the general to arrive. 
Holding up trains, he sits with his goat. 

Finally General Maurizio Mario Moris, 
friend of Gandhi’s Swiss friend, shows up 
and off to Moris’s villa, Monte Mario, they go, 
sontuoso manicured lawns, trees, topiary, 
the stately greenery of wealth and power, 
an admirable expanse of nature 
willy-nilly brought under well-groomed control. 

There was quiet at the Palazzo Venezia 
Duce not happy about Gandhi’s choice, 
the loss of profitable propaganda 
as host to this famous man. 

In any event, the day progressed. 
Gandhi visited a Montessori school 
and the Vatican museums, but not the Pope, 
who was otherwise occupied 
in not offending the Brits. 

As evening drew on 
Gandhi, his goat Nirmala, General Moris, 
the English hochgeboren 
Madeleine Slade, now hight Mirabehn, 
along with Desai, a secretary, 
met Mussolini inside the Palazzo Venezia 
in the enormous Sala del Mappamondo. 

Picture it, if you will; 
Ghandi in dhoti, Mussolini 
in full il Duce posture and mode 
and the goat, corpo di bacco! 
not chewing on the scenery 
or bleating or otherwise being goatish, 
just lifting smartly her right front hoof 
in courteous greeting, 
a perfect saluto Romano 
to the curious il Duce; 
the most diplomatic goat in caprine history. 

Milk and morale for more than Gandhi, 
said unfazed Muss, in excellent English. 
Then some close-clipped back and forth 
between Gandhi and Muss 
about this and that, the Pope’s snub, 
La bella Italia, India and England, 
uneasy bedfellows, politics, economics; 
Duce’s probing questions 
ably answered or parried 
by Gandhi or the goat 
who had suddenly learned to talk; 
a handy beast to have in your pocket. 

In ten minutes 
the Gandhi-Muss interview concluded 
and Gandhi and his entourage dismissed. 
Saluto al Duce! 

Don’t ask me too much 
about some purpose in all this 
or what we have to call 
Duce’s sinister hospitality. 
There’s one last arrow to drive home 
and it takes a long draw of the bow. 

Gandhi’s afternoon trip to the Vatican museums, 
in particular, the Sistine Chapel, 
brought one profound insight to Gandhi, 
a kind of aperçu among the polychromic profusion 
of Michelangelo’s ceiling, Raphael’s rich brocades, 
the frescos of the old Italian masters, 
Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli. 

He saw a simple wooden crucifix 
at the center of the high altar, 
the dying Christ, half-naked, 
hanging by nails from the cross. 
He performed a ritual ambulation around it, 
a kind of pradakshina, 
deep emotion, eyes wet 
as Mirabehn noted 
and, yes, even tears 
as he told Desai on the way out. 

Gandhi saw the agony of the cross 
as joy, the joy of pain voluntarily borne for others, 
a deliberate courtship of suffering to give new life 
in a fight to the death, based on love 
with no room for hatred of the oppressor. 

What did the goat, Nirmala, think of this? 
A talking goat dreamed up 
on the fly happens 
to know a thing or two or three. 
Nirmala, more than just “pure” and “clean” 
sensibly, wisely addresses Gandhi: 

Gandhi, I respect your commitment 
to the power of love and pain, 
but I don’t buy it, don’t pay it no mind. 
I’m here, perforce, for milk and morale, 
I’m poet Hopkins’ Holy Cow, turned sacral goat, 
feeding you and your meager toothless body, 
that bald abstemious head, 
while English ladies follow you devotedly, 
while chaste girls sleep by you 
to test your chastity. 

Truth be told, I think you’re making 
this living Christ on a living cross 
for yourself as much as for India; 
selfish absorption in your own myth 
and I’m cuffed in for the sheer absurdity 
of a goat placed in your public history, 
a witness to the mystery of your joy of suffering, 
a witness in on the joke, 
on the egoism of a holy man’s creed 
that all is not samsara, that spiritual reality 
on our common earthly ground 
is hydra-headed, is heads getting cracked by lathis; 
life at the core found in direct action 
and in that final hard place 
death embraced as a friend. 

Nirmala blinked slowly 
and said, Bapu, 
keep fighting, keep fasting 
and I’ll keep the milk coming. 
I eat grass for milk, 
you give up food for India. 
Same coin, different pastures. 

Sacrifice for God? 
For me, I don’t care. 
I’m a goat. 

But don’t be too quick 
to bring your faith to the point 
of spiritual eccentricity; 
your life is here on earth 
and here on earth 
God will find you. 

Jack D. Harvey’s

poetry has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Comstock Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, Scrivener, Typishly Literary Magazine, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Poems (“The Perspective of Venice” and “The Dogmeat General”) by Jack D. Harvey in Poetry: Issue 97, July 2025 at The Write Launch

⚡ Guernica at the Prado, ekphrastic poem by Harvey in Bewildering Stories (Issue 840, January 2020)

⚡ Three Poems by Jack D. Harvey (“Cetacean”; “Quem Quaeritis”; and “Ode to Olivia”) in The Ramingo’s Porch (30 July 2019)