Poetry Talk

New post from Janhavi Munde

No Helen, of No Troy

How to be an academic, an advocate,

A revolutionary, a human, or simply just humane,

When we are tied to choices

even monarchs couldn’t make?

When we are so young, only just thrown into the world,

And we are already at war.

For we know that these decisions

Will decide the future which we will own

And it is ours, solely.

The future is only mine, and only yours, and

Only ours.

The tragedies we marvelled at in our youth

Have come alive, trudging through their graves of fantasy,

And gnaw at us, eat us alive, and fester us so,

That the only other choice is ignorance.

But we have learned, that Ignorance is not bliss,

It is lethal, deadly, dangerous,

the worst kind of poison.

Because we are not Icarus,

We are not the Olympians in their silence.

We are voices, turned Artemis, turned Athena, turned Hippolyta, turned Otrera.

And we must adapt, and you have forced our hand, and turned us Brutus,

So Brutus we will be.

We wear his robe, we stab with his sword, into your back, into your back, into your back,

Twisting, tears in our eyes, Wretched laughs tearing their way out of our throats,

Shouting, Shouting, Crying: “Liberation!”,and “Freedom is Ours!”..

And so it will stain us, taint our conscience,

And stay with us forever.

“Et tu?” You ask,

Yes. Us too. Us only. Us ultimately.

I am not the face of this war.

My fallen, brothers, sisters,

Those who have it fires worse than me.

Are perhaps, Those who you muted.

And they, who have no voice,

they who bear only their heads high.

So if I must speak for them, I will,

I will shout, cry, yell, scream, until mine is gone as well,

And another takes my place.

We can only hope to be better than you.

Only hope that the murder of our conscience,

Saved the next from that fate.

We hope that t h e y will have Rome, Completely.

For we can only fight for it.

In name of No Helen, of No Troy.