A Poem Inspired by a Short Story

It was by chance that I came across a scanned copy of a poem I had written during my UG days, which I believed to have been lost forever. As a class, we were asked to create a class magazine that would feature literary and artistic works by the students in our class, taking inspiration from the texts we studied in the syllabus. Paintings, sketches, poems, cartoons and other creative submissions came forth, and every student in the class contributed.

My contribution was a poem that imaginatively explored the thought process that went through the minds of two characters in a short story at a defining moment in the story. Given below is a copy of what I had submitted.

Given below is a poem based on Guy de Maupassant's short story "Deux Amis" or "Two Friends". The story revolves around two friends, Monsieur Morissot and Monsieur Sauvage, who are abducted by Prussian soldiers while fishing in the Seine river outside Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. When forced to choose between betraying their country and instant death, both chose death. This poem is a small attempt at imaginatively expressing the inner dialogue of the characters while in a life-or-death situation. Was their choice simply a patriotic response or something much more...

What's the Point?

The rifles aimed at us

sent shivers through our body.

But the trembling died

before our tranquil hearts.

Death or treason

were the choices before us,

and we chose death

without a second thought.

With humanity at each other's throats

and endless devastation all around,

what's the point of living on

just to witness the dying world.

What better way than this

to end our lives on a good note,

when the lives of us two

can save even a few.