‘Much Later, Achilles and Arjuna Speak of the Gods’ and other poems
ABOUT THE POEMS The world’s great epics show their valorous, and sometimes vain, heroes at the crest of their powers. But what happens in the aftermath of heroic victories? In ‘Much Later, Achilles and Arjuna Speak of the Gods,’ Minal Hajratwala imagines her two protagonists as aged men occupying the same hospital chamber. Shorn of their martial settings, they look back regretfully at their past selves, much in the way that readers might regard characters. Taking the idea of parallel progressions further in ‘Terza Rima in Bermuda,’ Hajratwala deploys a little-used poetic form: the terza rima made famous by Dante, in which triads of lines rhyme in an aba bcb cdc scheme, so that sounds appearing between rhymes in one stanza begin to rhyme in the next, and then fall away entirely in the third. Here, they do so in parallel columns at the same time, making the eye shuttle back and forth between terze rime.
| (ENTER Patients.) We are old men now drinking gold instead of draping heavy chains over the breasts of our dreams. I never much cared for boobs. I was an ass man. Am. Was it worth it, all that sticky red gore? Did I honour my lover’s cannon-melted lump of jaggery? Ten thousand twirls of her sari. Strap-marks on his chest where the armour chafed. When He spoke the universe sweetened With the light & wind She tricked me, with the vengeance-melody with the song of duty & order, & it seemed the only way we could restore order to find peace but where is the order in battle, o but where is the peace in mayhem, what I wielded with the tip of my sword what I dispensed, arrow after pure arrow arcing bright through the muscles of men aimed true into the hearts of my cousins like divine love? I would rather have adored, adorned. Had I dared…? Now they sing of us in rhymed couplets, heroic metre as if we were brave. Shit-scared. Bastard. Orphan. Cunt. Kund, kundalini, Kunti. If I had known you then? I’d have shot an arrow into your noble eye. (ENTER Nurse, with syringes. Shh, shh, she soothes as veterans’ nightmares soot the ceiling of the PTSD ward. She lifts each soft, mottled wrist to find the vein.) |
| This thing covering something will henceforth be called skinIts inner scaffolding is named bone System of sinews that shifts it let’s moniker muscle or Id Growing from it is hair in soft waves of sex Deep inside geography untamed soul solely occupied with mapping itself silently no will or ill intent Intending ease of transmission the whole calls itself Minal cuts the ribbon throws open the doors begins to serve |
rain. This islandholiday's been pain, slow daisy chainfraying, so she's packed & prepped to go when she sees this may be the storm to seize as souvenir: sundress, key ring, T-shirt, wordless steady downpour, deep thirst. ready, set, more fear than hope, she reaches for her shoulder — cold — then wonders how to mend. | She wakes her: Listen, rain. But she's wept island tears all night (wane of moon, ache of star), lain awake & thought how soon they'll leave; no mood to ruin morning sleep to grieve the end of what she wants, still, to belive— end of fate, of her & her, of the right to ordinary love. some soon night she'll rise alone, won't fight the day like this, will realise whatever one should know before she dies but not yet. Too soon to sever the dream, blue bits of forever. |