THE FOLLOWING WORK WAS SELECTED IN WINGWORD POETRY PRIZE 2023 LONGLIST.
It was only after their rivers began to run black with pyre-ash, and their graveyards grew to cities sprawling wide, that they, seeking an end to their misery, turned their fury upon those long dead – their forefathers.
In the memory of their forefathers, they had waged eternal war amongst themselves. For their glory and their honour, age after age had butchered its children; and weeping, mourning its loss, had sworn vengeance, and stabbed itself in the heart – again, and again, and again. Till in the blood-frenzy all-consuming, all that was innocent got corrupted and all that was delicate withered away, leaving them feral and ruthless capable of feeling only hatred.
They hated; violently breeding to further their creed, they hated even as they made love; they hated; they could not love.
But then there came a time when throats were being slit faster than the bodies could be buried, or burnt and their ashes scattered; and so the pile of the naked dead kept mounting higher, higher still.
It was only then, when the smell of the corpses grew so pungent, that not even the most steadfast in their hatred could deny, all rotting corpses smelt alike-- no matter the faction, no matter the creed-- that they wondered: had they been lied to? If in death all their distinctions faded away, then…
Then their differences might not be as insurmountable as they had thought.
Was there really no hope of reconciliation?
They looked about, and the devastation they had wrought upon themselves became apparent.
Who remembered who had drawn first blood? Ten thousand years of war, and now no one did. But since then, genocide had followed conquest had followed genocide had followed conquest; and their history, a panegyric on blood and hate, bequeathed from father to son, had sowed the seeds of inherited war; till now, when all that was good had perished.
The books of history would have to be burnt then, and their deceiving truths buried; their forefathers would have to be killed, or else they would sing their symphonies for ever-more, and their wars would have no end.
So they tore down their monuments.
Beautiful palaces of marble so serene, as if made of clouds plucked from the heavens and compressed to brick, were broken down to rubble, the rubble pounded to dust and blown away with the wind. For they were too reminiscent of the kings of old, who had raised massive armies, and waged terrible wars, and taught their subjects that the art of war was a noble art and a virtuous art. War had to be forgotten, and so these ancient kings had to be forgotten.
Even so, they razed their own cities to the ground. They did this with some remorse, for these cities had not been lacking at all in splendour, and had been home to great poets and great thinkers in the ages past. Once perhaps even lovers would’ve sauntered through their gardens, and children, happy, frolicked on their streets-- but now these cities were the legacy of death and slaughter, and the stench of blood had taken root deep within their walls. They razed them to the ground, and on their blood-drunk earth grew forests thick and wild, that obscured them from view; the most desperate seeker would not find their site.
Then they had to lose their faith. Zealotry had caused so much woe, that they could not possibly risk the remembrance of their gods. Even the most devout suffered to blaspheme against their deities. They broke the idols of their gods and ripped in two the books of wisdom which through the centuries had been handed down to them, with life preserved against famine and flood. They consoled their mourning selves, by swearing that they would write their myths anew and found a new religion incapable of perversion. But in their hearts, they knew that a godless world would likely be less sinful than their faithful one.
At last, with trembling hands, they raised to their lips draughts of amnesia; they had to become orphans now, in memory at least if not in birth. The draught would make them forget clan and family. With trembling hands, and souls that writhed, cried out in torment at the thought of forgetting their forefathers. Their forefathers, they pled to them for forgiveness, for mercy; and cursed them for all of their suffering.
They faltered; they could not--theirs’ was a dying world, but must all die? Could not the faintest memory remain, the last miserable remnant of a fallen world? But it would spread, and it would breed; from a single drop the blood-seed would build itself again, and sing; till the last stinking corpse rotted bloodless.
Forgiveness, O you that were glory! Forgiveness, O you that were honour! What end could be to total war but total death?
So they gulped down the fiery liquid and burned away their mothers and their fathers from their hearts.
And so they were liberated.
They had no recollection of their past selves now; the world before had turned to ash and dust. With vacant eyes they looked about, not knowing kith and kin, not knowing how to raise a sword nor knowing whom to raise a sword for. With everything else, War had died, Misery had died. Once they were fallen, but now they knew nothing of their fall and so were risen again. As innocent children, they were-- one with the wind, and the earth, and the sun. And one with each other.