Toh Hsien Min (b. 1975)
SELECTED POEMS
Nordic Epic Part Seven
It was obviously not the end of time,
except for him, neither an enemy’s lunch.
The arrowhead we found inside his shoulder
was witness to a prehistoric crime.
He had been sheltering behind the boulder
when someone, perhaps on a hunch,had ambushed him. He had climbed higher where
the pine trees grew, then down to hornbeam woods.
He’d scampered almost seven thousand feet
up to the glacier. None would find him there,
he thought. The arrow’s flight was sure and sweet.
Even at a lower altitudethe arrow going through the shoulder blade
and severing the artery would have
been fatal; here his haemorrhagic shock
was quick: his heart began to race, sweat made
him damp and even colder, and the rock
could barely hold him up; his laboured breathcould not supply his brain with oxygen.
This much we know by perfecting our science,
but what we do not know is in his soul.
Why did he turn his back? Did he know then
his time was up, that ice would keep him whole,
that we would speak his murder from these signs?
by Toh Hsien Min
from Lilla Torg (2023)
