Sampurna Chattarji: Neither Reckless Nor Complacent

8.

The naming of Hannibal’s elephants.

*

They strode out of the Atlas,

flat-headed, fan-eared,

fighting with tusk and trunk,

smelling bad enough to drive the horses mad.

Historians, naturalists, archaeologists fussing

over a single Carthaginian coin.

Snow, and black

trumpeting rock.

*

Names invincible enough.

Names with war in their throats

and a dying hunger.

Spearheads entering flesh.

Mountains being scaled.

*

Only one survived.

Surus, the Syrian.

Indian elephant reaches Carthage from Syria via Egypt.

Names the colour of flint.

*

Their mouths turned blue.

In their brains the names still whirred,

thirty-seven bar one,

whispered by poets

in the form of birds that fell.

The gasp of the last big secret.

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