Moirae
Naru Dames Sundar
I.
Atropos, in the ink-stained night,
Shears forged from time-foam
Buried in the light cone’s shadow.
Lachesis, counting star-seeds,
Trapped in bound infinity,
Unspooling the sea of aeons.
Clothos, all-mother, weaving,
And from the loom,
Light and time and
Dreams of empires.
II.
Atropos, at Thermopylae,
Burnished copper her shears.
Three hundred delicate cuts.
Lachesis, counting time in
Slabs of Persian silver,
From a goatherd’s sack.
Clothos, stitching —
Infant myths cracking
From seed shells buried
In a dust riddled pass.
III
Atropos, at Amritsar,
Shears borne on rifle shot.
Turbans unravelling into
Shrouds at Jallianwalla Bagh.
Lachesis weeping salt tears,
At a locus of ends.
Clothos, pinned down,
Against the wet earth.
No threads warm the spindles
As empire shatters the loom.
α.
Atropos, in despair — hands clawing
Seas of frayed silvered thread
Lachesis, ears closed, a surrender
Clothos, shuttle weaving, silent.
No answers, nothing but quiet,
Nothing but the wheel turning
Alpha to omega to alpha.
IV.
Atropos, at Nagasaki,
Sunflowers petals burning.
Lachesis, finger-slash
Across one spindle entire,
Clothos, weave-mistress,
Blinded by second suns.
Three moirae, wordless.
There moirae, a-witness.
Three moirae, broken-backed
In the sepulcher of innocence.
β.
Atropos, iris unwound —
Scissor cut even as eyes weep
Tears of fractured space-time
Lachesis, ears stoppered —
Even ‘against the silken crackle of
Ten billion unwinding spools.
Ten billion twisted threads, shorn.
Clothos, at the loom, death-weight
Collapsing shoulder collar spine
V.
Atropos, at Antares Sigma,
Scissor cut the thread of worlds,
Neon gleam the star-burning wildfire
Ash bright the sublimating moons.
Lachesis, at the birthing tanks,
When storm-light fell to ground
Thread fragments slit at planck-scale.
Clothos, loom rattle roaring,
And in three sister-hearts,
Three lacunae of despair.
VI.
Atropos, in the late twilight
The stasis-song of god-worlds
The temple-moons bright with song
Scissor cut as slow as aeons
Lachesis, tongue swollen stilled
As thread seas collapse into
Superstrings of star-cluster minds
Clothos, loom stilled but for
A single thread’s whisper
A single immortal husk
VII.
Atropos, in the end-dark
Past the frayed end of stars
Thread fragments of dead gods
Scissor blades now but rusted shards
Lachesis, lips eyes ears tears sorrows
Collapsed into seams between
Fold and well, and husk and shadow
Clothos, heddle stilled, cocooned.
Three sisters sifted down into
Blade spindle and one single thread
Ω.
Atropos, before birth
In the antechamber of dust
Slate gray the space folds
Dark origami pressed down
Into singular point light
Lachesis, nothing but spindle shaft
A myth-song waiting for thread verse
Clothos, nothing but loom dreams
Of thread, waxen wick dream-lit
Sudden sun-fire expanding
Into star souls, empire dreams
And the myth skin of three sisters
Coalescing from the quantum mere
α.
Atropos, star-bright with hope —
___
About his poem, Naru writes: “Moirae is a poem about cycles. Specifically I began with the greek mythological imagery of the three fates and their respective roles and explored how their symbolic representations could translate into other times both past and present and future. The poem is itself cyclical in that its end returns to the tabula rasa of the beginning, a counterpoint to the tragedies that each verse focuses on. The other aspect of the poem is the notion of witnessing. The moirae are both anthropomorphic deities but are themselves locked into the machinery of destiny and I wanted to explore the impact of the cyclical tragedies of human civilization on the fates as individuals and their own struggle against the roles imposed upon them — and as the last line highlights, their own internal capacity for hope.”
