Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
(third century, b.c.)
First, Kartikeya, there’s no pride involved,
nor humility; understand this. I speak
of atonement, that is, if blood can ever
be wiped away with words. We will engrave
this message on volcanic rock, right here
where the earth still reeks of slaughter.
A hundred thousand courted death, mind you.
The battlefield stank so that heaven
had to hold a cloth to its nose. I trod
this plain, dark and glutinous with gore,
my chariot-wheels squelching in the bloody mire.
Nothing stands now between them and destruction,
neither moat nor bridge nor hut nor door-leaf.
No lighted tapers call them to their village.
It is to them that you will speak, or rather
I will speak through you. So don’t enunciate
the law of piety, no aphorisms
which say that good is difficult and sin easy.
And no palaver about two peafowl
and just one antelope roasting in my kitchen
instead of an entire hecatomb as in
my father’s days. There may be huts where
they have nothing to burn on the hearth-fires.
Spare me the shame. And no taboos, please,
forbidding the caponing of roosters
or drinking of spirituous liquors,
the castration of bulls and rams and
the branding of horses. So listen with care,
Kartikeya, and I will tell you what to write.
First talk about the sorrows of conquest
and other miseries attendant on
enslavement. In all lands live Brahmins,
anchorites and householders, each enmeshed
in the outer skin of relationships,
that network of duty and herd impulse
through which each charts his particular furrow.
And the sword falls on such people and their
children are blighted, while the affection
of their friends remains undiminished.
Mark that, don’t talk merely of raping and slaughter
but also of separation from loved ones.
And about my sorrow what will you say?
How will you touch upon that weed-ridden lake-floor
of my despair and keep from drowning?
Say simply that of all the people killed
or captured, if the thousandth part were to
suffer as before, the pain would overwhelm me.
Tell them I have abjured pride, the lowest
can abuse me now and I shall not answer.
Let the dust of humility cover my head.
Even the tribals, dark and bullet-headed,
the blubber-skinned, the ones from whom our demons
and yakshas have borrowed their faces,
I invite to my fold. Let them turn from crime
and their aboriginal ways and they will not suffer.
Cut deeper than the cuts of my sword
so that even as moss covers the letters
they are visible. Write whatever
you chance on. Don’t look for a white-quarter boulder
Anything will do, a mass of trap rock
or just a stone sheet. And the language simple,
something the forest folk can understand.
I am not speaking to kings, to Antiyoka
and Maga or Alikasudra. And no
high-flown language. I am not here
to appease gods. Even they must be ignored
for a while and their altar-fires turn cold.
Men don’t have enough fuel to burn their dead.
Mind you, Kartikeya, between me and them is blood.
Your words will have to reach across to them
like a tide of black oxen crossing a ford.
~from ‘The Keeper Of The Dead‘
← Keki Daruwalla
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