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.