A Consul's Elegy Poem by Ananta Madhavan

As a young diplomat I was sent decades ago
To our embassy in Switzerland. I had to keep
In touch with my own countrymen
And help them to connect with authority.

I still recall, sixty-odd years later,
A tragic case, though I did not know
The victim, who was of my age,
My country too, seeking a workman's future.

The phone rang in my sitting room.
It sounded ominous so late that night.
‘Yes', I said, ‘Go on, I'm listening'.
‘An accident? A car perhaps? ' No, sir.

It had happened otherwise, at daybreak.
The youth was in the factory, shifting pulp
Into products of commercial value.
Reams of newsprint in fact.

The paper in the mill had been caught
Within a whirl of swirling cylinders;
Helpless, he had been trapped and flung,
His body badly mangled, dead.

How sad. I did not simulate or pretend;
A slow grief moved inside my head,
Like fingers reading Braille. I felt
A pity adequate but chill.

Next I call for continents and wait
Till Kanpur come to London, but
The voice of my party is scattered
In fragments of atomized noise.

What can I do or plead in lament,
But ask for the timing of flights?
As always, the failure to connect.
Mine was so many griefs ago.

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