Beast of Empire

TaklamakanWhere the thread turns on you,silk to supine, refuses to weave—grows sinews to break freeWhere Kublai Khan's royal sealis not accepted—You must pay a toll to the sinisterand the afreet*for passage.You say you're a writer—collecting fears for a king's earsay you livein the mouth of a princess.The ghosts of flaming catapultshave heard it all:the banner and drum, javelin and sword,vulture and kite, flesh rottingin your talk,heard the rattle of skulls in your tambourine,the lies of empire turning your syntax blue.This afterworld of ammunitiona howlwhipping the desert*afreet: demon.* * *.Scholar Jinn Enters the Ink Doors.Pouring my worlddown this sacred column.A copper nib.At the bottom:a mirrorand a shadow.a wild horse missing a rumpanother jinntrapped between.a cold sigh& grammar.encased in veined marblehumiliation.This exquisiteforbidden world.fashionedof shisham & grain of otheraromatic woods.These doorscarved with poppiesThese sound canals between our worlds.You may pass throughasleep in your green shawl.* * *.Beast of Empire.Elephant with emerald eyes on a studded copper platesprinkling rosewater in a Mughal court scene,what, beyond bright or smoky stoneshave you seen:Tangled infantry, wall of spears,riot of silk howdahs, hunting fevers, festivalsof light, trampled peasants, mahawat's pumice, dimpledmemsahibs, stun guns, massive palace doorsdesigned for you?.Elephant, you gasping mound of flesh,recoiling in shock of fire-arrowsshot by Alexander's army in Punjabthe land of pronged riversYou, a legend as war-booty(more charming than Homer's catalogue of ships)along with seventy-nine others from Porus's army,rattling the Hydaspes battlefield in captive chains.Elephant alone in the dark with a hunger for truth,offering each body part as a wildly whole factto the four men of Rumi's masnaviencircled by certitude,each calling you pillar,fan,waterspout,or throne—a disagreement between the manyfull shapes appended to truthunder your mirror-work saddle.Elephant who held his emperor in the innermost chamberof your heart, beast of the golden ageof poetry and of the master who was poet firstemperor last, who, in the end,took the boat by the backdoor, Red Fort to RangoonMaula Baksh hathi, last Mughal elephant,what mighty love,to refuse food from the raj, to take beatingsfrom Colonel Sanders, to court a slow, droopingdeath on the blunt blade of empire.Elephant ravaging the bazaar in Burma,you were reported to the sub-inspectorfor destroying a bamboo hut, turning overthe municipal rubbish van, raiding fruit-stallsand killing a cow.Alive, you were worth a hundredpounds, dead, only five (for the tusks)You also killed a man,an untouchable cooliefound facedown in the mud—his worth unchanged—From under the plumageof empire, an Englishman shot youThe rifle was a beautiful German thingwith cross-hair sights. .Elephant named after a Royal courtesanPaisleys in white chalkon your forehead,you grace the Karachi zooas Anarkali come back from the deadJeweled, fragile,you carry a mammoth achein your slow, flabby gait.~ Shadab Zeest Hashmi is the author of Kohl & Chalk and Baker of Tarifa. She has won the San Diego Book Award for poetry, the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times. She has been published in Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, The Cortland Review, Vallum, Atlanta Review, Journal of Postcolonial Writings, and other journals worldwide. Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Urdu.