Pyres of Vermilion: Three poems by Antara Mukherjee
'A King with two small boys arrives on an elephant’. Source: The San Diego Museum of Art / Wikimedia Commons
‘The war cry has long bled the emblem, all sons / Headless heap now, trumpetless coronation’
I. The Invasion
Hooves have marched up the moat
The glint through an eclipse – a rounded deceit
Black flags ululate the kohl-rimmed hearts
Burns the muslin Queen with the other rajputanis
In pyres of vermilion.
Tormented flesh, the scattered Taj,
Looted gold, slaves handcuffed.
The Sultan’s mighty, is this how he loves?
His savagery proliferates
Branding surrendered arms, the royal Darbar
The war cry has long bled the emblem, all sons
Headless heap now, trumpetless coronation
A dawn the eyes refuse, the leftovers mourn
But behold the spirited revolt of a spitted-tamarind
Tearing apart the damasked earth, silently besieged.
II. A man’s cry
The day the men rolled cowries to save their kingdom
They pledged a woman as a luminous token
The day the white soldiers hulled their victory
The nautch girls bled between the sheets
The day little Nawab sprinkled some Old Spice
The hopscotching girl grew to manage her neckline
The day the clerk was sent back home
His wife was handcuffed as a gelded goat, later made to please
Who says a man cannot cry, can’t feel?
Scuttle for his emotions in a woman’s sufferings.
III. A courtesan’s love
Betelnut tucked between her molars
The courtesan anklets him forth
In her glass chamber, trades
Scarletrose, sherbet and secret scrolls
For a night that dunks the sickled moon on his face
Coins cannot bend her lustrous gait
She’s a woman who can write
Dohas and ghazals are quilled on her walls, on floors-redoxide
Banished from domestication, even the grave
The Englishman’s promise can assail her shame
A lantern burns, gathers undereye soot all night
A new poet will be birthed in the land of Tennyson afar
But she blew the callowed conch that night
Gunpowdered blood of her countrymen, she smelled on his hide
The surrendered uniform, although, the town remembered
Was suffered by the Englishman’s love for a fallen woman
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Antara Mukherjee has done her M.A. in English Literature from the University of Calcutta. Her work has been published by Muse India, Sahitya Akademi, Kitaab, and a recent short story won the first spot in an “All India Literature Competition” hosted by the Anthelion School of Art. She has also co-written a playscript that is currently under production by a local theatre group in Bangalore. You can find her on Twitter: @antarawrites.
