from Devadatta’s Poems
A star had appeared in the night sky,
it was long and pointed as an adder’s tooth.
The moon rose putrescent, bloody. All our
elephants had turned viridian-eyed, wild.
Dozens of snakes hissed as though a fierce
wind blew. Many children fell ill,
tottered on legs like blown-up bladders.
All we could do was summon the Brahmins,
watch as they poured ghee over the altars
and burnt our cattle in sacrifice. After a week
we had little left to offer, though we still
dug fields, hauled water, turned the loam.
We all felt Kapilavatthu was done for,
that not one of those Brahmins had the verses
to save us. We drank bitter herbs,
flailed our skin with twigs we bought
from the broom makers, cut our arms
with shards from the potters’ workshops.
We fingered crimson beads and performed
small dry ceremonies in the dirt. Before
that season finally turned, I’d often long
for Siddhattha, for the little tunes he could play
on his thin, twisted stems of grass.
Something about his notes, their fine weaving
through the dusk. When I listened, I thought
of our clay daub, mud brick and whitewashed
town as a grand place, one whose streets
you could walk down squaring your shoulders,
knowing that the gods supped at the flames
that burnt on our altars. I don’t know
what Siddhattha heard in the notes.
Perhaps he foresaw the rise of the rivers,
border conflicts in the west, heard the screams
of our women and children, saw the smoke
and the fires, saw Kapilavatthu overrun
with Brahmins carrying slaughtered oxen
and antelope aloft from all our fire hearths—
all that blood and dung,
all the vulture feathers in their topknots.