Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poems

I Was Not Born to This Destiny

61 I Was Not Born to This Destiny I was not born in the month of making verses; nor spotless white horses were pulling this century. To celebrate my coming into existence a bowl of starch must have been distributed among neighbors who no longer solemnized the festival of blooming verdure. My first friend must have been the mynah who repeated her name to me, and under one roof in separate cages we were both imprisoned. There were not one or more columns in front of our house. No kind or flint-hearted woman was appointed my nanny who would have covered me or some wounded animal with garlands. My father had no ivory cane to beat me with. My mother would have become renowned for her long hair and long poems had my father not cut them off with his sickle. I was thrown on the fish nets that were laid away after the river silted up. The first thing my teeth felt must have been the wooden trough filled with the vomit of dogs. Quite early I must have learnt to fill my stomach with wild barley and the blood-red rice that was never among the food placed in the lake as offering for the dead. The peace pact was being witnessed when my father tendered his resignation from life, and knowing full well that no one else would have found the sea more compassionate, I pledged to carry out my plan to ford channels and straits; but my mother knew that I was not born to die anonymous on a faraway isle. Announcing my death as she covers me with a blood-stained sheet, she will recognize that I never lost a war. This page intentionally left blank ...