Throne of the Damned

Babylon, 323 BC

After conquering a vast empire, Alexander the Great entered Babylon. In a strange, gloomy and worrying moment, he stepped back from his own golden throne. Immediately, a ragged beggar climbed onto it and sat down. The Persian guards panicked—tearing their clothes and weeping, crying and screaming because, in their tradition, seeing someone else on the king’s throne was a sign of coming death. They tortured the beggar to see if he was part of a conspiracy, but he was just a lost, simple man. Yet the court diviners whispered a chilling interpretation: *It wasn’t the beggar wearing the crown—it was death itself, claiming the throne for another. * That very night, Alexander fell ill with a fever. The man who had ruled from Greece to India grew weak and silent. Days later, he was dead. 

Moral: Fate sits where kings fear to look.

Sham Misri

Sham Misri

Sham Misri-Author 

Sham Misri is a writer drawn to the meeting place of history, poetry, and reflection. His work is shaped by a deep interest in the lives of great figures, not only as historical personalities, but as mirrors of human ambition, struggle, longing, and inner transformation. Through a style that blends lyrical expression with thoughtful prose, he seeks to explore the emotional and symbolic meaning that lives beneath recorded events.

In Lyrical Alexander: Between Man and Myth, Sham Misri brings this vision fully to life. Rather than treating Alexander the Great as only a conqueror of lands and empires, he approaches him as a figure standing between humanity and legend — a man of immense will, brilliance, contradiction, and burden. This approach reflects the author’s wider literary interest: to move beyond surface storytelling and enter the deeper questions of identity, destiny, power, and the soul.

Sham Misri’s writing is marked by a strong appreciation for both the beauty of language and the depth of thought. He is especially interested in the way poetic form can illuminate history, giving voice not only to what happened, but to what it may have felt like, meant, or revealed. His work often invites readers to pause, reflect, and see familiar stories in a new light.

As a writer, he is drawn to themes of greatness and cost, aspiration and isolation, memory and mortality. His voice is at once literary and searching, aiming to create works that are not only read, but felt. In doing so, he offers readers more than narrative alone: he offers a meditative encounter with the human condition through the lives of extraordinary figures.

Sham Misri writes for those who love history, but also for those who seek meaning within history — readers who are interested not only in events, but in the inward journey that often lies hidden beneath them. His work reflects a belief that literature can serve as both remembrance and inquiry, preserving the past while also opening it to deeper reflection.

With Lyrical Alexander, Sham Misri presents himself as a distinctive voice — one committed to bringing together poetic imagination, philosophical sensitivity, and historical inspiration in a way that is both accessible and memorable.

 

Defeat of Porus

 Defeat of Porus

Eratosthenes, you’d shake your head:
“This slaughter reads too smooth,” you said,
“Too neat, too shaped, too fit for song—
Another victor’s version strong.”

But hear what followed on that sand:
Coenus struck from the rearward hand.
The Indian cavalry turned in strain,
Forced to face both front and rear at once again.

Alexander saw their staggered line
And drove his Companions through the sign.
The left wing broke, the horsemen fled
Toward the elephants in rising dread.

Then terror turned upon its own.
The gray beasts, wounded, overthrown,
Trumpeted, wheeled, and maddened fast,
Till friend and foe were crushed at last.

Drivers fell from bleeding height.
The beasts grew wild beneath the fight.
The Macedonians slipped aside,
Then stabbed and struck at flank and hide.

By afternoon the monsters slowed,
Exhausted in the blood-soaked road.
Then came the signal: shields locked near,
The infantry advanced with spear.

The cavalry swept the edges bare;
No ordered refuge remained there.
The Indian line, encircled, torn,
Collapsed beneath the weight of war.

So doubt the cave, Eratosthenes.
Doubt the griffins and old decrees.
But battle won by flank and fear,
By patient stroke and timing clear,
By enemy strength turned back in pain—
That is no fiction dressed as gain.

The Hydaspes ran dark and wide,
And Porus stood where kingdoms died.

Prose:
Once Coenus came in behind, the Indian cavalry was forced into fatal confusion. Alexander pressed hard from the front, and the wings collapsed back toward the elephants. There the battle turned savage. Wounded elephants panicked and trampled their own men as much as the enemy. Macedonian discipline held. They avoided the beasts when they charged wildly, then struck back as they tired. At last the infantry advanced in close order, the cavalry enclosed the field, and Porus’s army was broken almost beyond recovery.

Alexander’s Tactics

 Alexander’s Tactics

Eratosthenes, you’d lean and squint:
“No man outruns an elephant’s hint.
This is only praise in battle dress—
A king made wise by scribal excess.”

But watch him now. He sees the line:
The tusked front, the fatal spine,
The gaps where infantry waits to kill—
And says at once, “Not there. Be still.

The center’s death. I take the side.
I’ll make them turn before they ride.”
He counts his horse, he marks their own,
And sees where speed may break the stone.

“Coenus,” he says, “take your band.
Circle wide by the farther hand.
When they are drawn to meet my blow,
Strike from behind and overturn the flow.”

Then still he keeps the foot in place,
Unloosed as yet from battle’s pace.
First come the horse-archers, a thousand bows,
Whose arrows darken where the left wing goes.

They sting, they scatter, they test, they wound;
They make confusion on the ground.
Then Alexander’s Companions ride
Into the shaken, opening side.

Before the Indians can fully form,
The hooves come down like sudden storm.
No tusked front, no center’s snare—
He strikes where strength is thinnest there.

So doubt the cave, Eratosthenes.
Doubt the mountain and old stories.
But a general who knows what not to fight,
Who shuns the center’s waiting night,
Who wounds the flank, then drives it through—
Needs no myth to make it true.

The plain itself became his page,
And tactics wrote the opening stage.

Prose:
Porus had made the center of his army deadly with elephants and supporting infantry. Alexander saw immediately that to charge there head-on would be ruin. So he used his cavalry superiority instead. He threatened the Indian left, sent Coenus wide to work behind the other wing, held his infantry back until disorder began, and first loosed horse-archers to weaken the line. Only then did he launch the Companion cavalry. His plan was not blunt force, but controlled disruption.

Arrangements of Porus

 Arrangements of Porus

Eratosthenes, you’d raise an eyebrow:
“Two hundred elephants? I ask you how
Any man could face that wall
And live to write of it at all.”

But Porus drew his line in sand—
Not mud, not marsh, but riding land,
Where horses wheeled and chariots ran,
And battle might be shaped by plan.

First stood the elephants, gray and vast,
A measured interval between them cast.
A living wall of trunk and face,
Set there to break the charging pace.

Behind them stood the infantry,
Ready to fill each opening swiftly.
If horsemen slipped between the line,
Spears would answer their design.

Upon the wings the cavalry stayed,
And before them the chariot brigades.
Three hundred rolling frames of war,
Prepared to cut and scatter more.

A few great beasts he left behind
To hold back Craterus by fear of kind.
Then eastward marched the Indian king
Where sand would best sustain the ring.

So doubt the cave, Eratosthenes.
Doubt the eagles and old decrees.
But a king who spaces his elephants well,
Who reads the ground where horsemen dwell,
Who makes of terror a measured wall—
That is no child’s dream at all.

The plain lay bare. The tusks held still.
And there the meeting of wills would fill
The open earth with death and fame,
Where one king waited and one king came.

Prose:
When Porus learned that Alexander had crossed and that his son had fallen, he resolved to march out with most of his army rather than remain fixed in place. He drew up his forces on firm, sandy ground. The elephants stood in front, evenly spaced to terrify horses and break attack. Infantry waited behind them to fill the gaps, while cavalry and chariots guarded the wings. It was a deliberate and formidable formation, built not only on numbers, but on intelligent use of terrain and fear.

 The Battle at the Hydaspes Begins

Eratosthenes, you’d cast your scroll—
“Which tale is true? Who played what role?
First mountains shift, then horses die—
Is this not praise dressed up as lie?”

Listen, skeptic. Here’s the knot:
Alexander landed, wet and hot,
With horse and foot in ordered might,
And all the river at his back.

“Charge,” he said. “Do not delay.
We break them now, or hold the way.
If they run, we ride them down;
If they stand, we seize the crown.”

But what of Porus’ son? Some say
He came with chariots in poor array,
Too late, too weak, too rash to bind
The crossing won by sharper mind.

Others say a stronger band
Came hard upon the river strand,
And blows were traded, wounds were dealt,
And Bucephalas himself was felled.

Yet Ptolemy, steadier than song,
Tells it plainer, spare and strong:
The prince arrived when all was done—
Too late to break what had been won.

Three stories drift upon one tide.
Which is truth? The river hides.
Yet this is certain: the king got through.
This too is certain: the danger grew.

So doubt the cave, Eratosthenes.
Doubt the mountain and fantasies.
But battle begun beyond that flood,
On a shore won first by rain and mud—
That is no tale that flattery weaves.
It is what remains when the river recedes.

Prose:
Alexander had crossed with roughly 5,000 cavalry and nearly 6,000 infantry and chose to act at once, trusting speed before the enemy could fully gather. Ancient accounts differ over the role of Porus’s son and the size of the force he brought forward, but the clearest tradition holds that he arrived too late to prevent the crossing. Whatever the details, the essential fact remains: Alexander had secured the far bank and now moved quickly to turn a successful passage into the opening advantage of battle.

Passage of the Hydaspes

 Passage of the Hydaspes

Eratosthenes, you’d shake your pen:
“More fables for the sons of men!”
But thunder does not lie for kings,
And rain can hide the hardest things.

Craterus waited. Meleager stayed.
The king took the keenest edge of his blade—
Companions, Scythians, Bactrian riders,
Archers, guards, and Agrianian fighters.

No drum, no torch. A silent tread
Away from the bank where Porus lay spread.
To grove and bend and island’s breast,
Where skins were stuffed and boats lay dressed.

Then broke the sky. Rain fell like spears.
Thunder swallowed the night’s small fears.
Lightning cleft the dark apart—
Yet still a whisper could set to start
A thousand oars.

At dawn the storm withdrew its hand.
The river lay cold, a sheet of iron.
The sentries blinked and did not see
The first boat slide from the island tree.

Alexander stood in the thirty-oared prow,
With trusted captains beside him now.
They landed—but the ground was wrong:
An island, not the bank they sought.

The flood had drowned the lesser way;
The ford itself had swelled astray.
Horses sank to the bridle’s foam,
And infantry waded breast-deep on.

Yet one by one they gained the shore—
Dripping, cold, but ready for war.
Horse-archers first, the guards behind,
Agrianians on the flanks aligned.

So doubt the cave, Eratosthenes.
Doubt the griffins and golden bees.
But a man who crosses twice in one dark—
By boat, by flood, by unmarked ford—
Who turns the storm into disguise,
And lands on error, yet makes it prize—

That is no eulogy. That is the bone
Of command that makes the unknown stone.
The Hydaspes saw. The rain forgot.
And Porus, far away, knew not
That the fox had already gained the strand—
Wet, but armed, and in his land.

Prose:
Alexander left Craterus and Meleager behind and marched secretly with his best troops to the hidden crossing point. There boats and skin-rafts had been prepared in advance. A violent storm broke over the river that night, and its thunder concealed the sounds of movement and embarkation. At dawn the crossing began. Alexander first landed on an island by mistake, but even the flooded channel beyond could not stop him. Men and horses forced their way through deep water and reached the far bank, where the army quickly formed for battle.