The Impregnable Fort

Abdullah AL Mamun

I infiltrated the Golconda fort
Through a magical gate.
The vast empty space, sprawling
About, gripped my muse like an enchantress
dragging me into its unknown mystery,
And its thousand years’ trajectory –
Myths and legends,
Tragedy, tortures, trauma and triumph!
I passed through its
Heaps of heavy stone hallways,
Piled up profusely along its harrowing heights!
The black and grey and white- I
Journeyed painfully to its unrivalled top
To weigh the pride it possesses!
The empty caverns, watery tunnels and dark
Stillness of the caves as I walked –
The harrowing quietude of the massive stones in
Their stony slumber
Haunted my heart
With an inexplicable horror.
Panic seized me at the sight
Of its grandiloquent walls protruding
Their large voluptuous mouths agape!
In wonder and in awe I stood
Motionless- my eyeballs in stillness
Transfixed across the wild, lush, winding mossy
Ways of the green like a lustrous silky thread
Coiling the walls sensuously –
with an eternal embrace in love!
The horrid hard rocks seemed wedded to quietness-
With the soothing soft rustle of those
Ten thousand aged, green, perpetual mossy shrub.
A comforting illusion indeed!
My heart could heed soon the screams of horror,
The shrieks of pains from some unknown tunnel,
Were those cries from the blood soaked convicts or
Prisoners of war? Men and women in excruciating pains?
Soldiers injured with blood soaked body refusing to die?
The stony barbed-wire prison walls mockingly
Lashed on their voice!
I could only hear them wince in pain
In shadowy outlines- unable to break the walls.
Some cried ‘water’ and died with a perched throat
The stony walls saw them drop down dead
Miserably –without a sigh of mortification!
The ear-splitting growl of many in
Cacophonous choir broke the silence of
The upper sequestered chambers.
A persistently deafening droning in pain
Seized me – the deep and hollow, empty and dry,
Tanks stared me in the face with a monstrous grin!
All dried up, no drip drop anywhere around
Nor even a delusion of water.
Only dusty, stale and arid air could be heard
Wailing and bemoaning resoundingly
About this colossal wreck!
All tears of anger, pain and pride died down
And hushed to silence!
The heroes’ horses’ hoofs trampled under feet the long
Carpet of marble-kissed grassy lines,
The exhausted and bleeding, Soldiers are around,
the winning and the losing,
The pompous and the swaggering emperor now
Emerged with a loud and unflagging cry,
Shaking the walls and rocks to tremble in fear!
Some dead bodies mute and mortally wounded,
Are around- carried along –cried aloud as martyrs,
While the barking dogs are sniffing at the
Dried up blood coagulated long!
The more I walked upward,
My senses got numbed with a fear
Unknown.
I was smeared with the incense kept
Long and deep in the corked vials,
And perfumed with rare foliage and flower petals-
Titillating my sensation with a confusion –
As I could hear the jingling anklets from women
Singing and dancing for the heroes
Filling their hearts with a fulfilling ecstasy!
As I dug further inside the dark and echoing tunnels,
I was only reminded of the ruins, remnants and wreckage of
WAR, the bloody business of mankind, bloodshed and death,
The clanging and clamoring-
Sounds of the swords shamelessly shining –
And I wonder how pride and power
On its horseback runs amok!