During the past few months, I’ve been introduced to the works of writers who explore what it means to be an immigrant. Some of the characters in these novels leave their home countries by choice; others are fleeing for their lives. One of the writers was the Punjabi poet, novelist, and essayist Amrita Pritam. I’ve only read her poem, “Ode to Waris Shah,” and an excerpt from her autobiography about the incident that gave rise to the poem: the Partition, the creation of Pakistan by the dismemberment of India in 1947. Of that year, Pritam writes that “…accounts of marauding invaders in all mythologies and chronicles put together will not, I believe, compare with the blood curling horrors of this historic year.”

What immediately sprang to mind was something I first heard as a child while watching a TV sitcom, something I later learned was a reference to the Roman lyric poet Horace. In book three of his Odes, he writes that “Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’ / We, their sons, are more worthless than they.” Given the magnitude of the violence and destruction attendant to India’s partition, it is no wonder Pritam sees no hyperbole in her belief that there is no historical comparison, that the widespread slaughter proved her generation to be “more worthless” than all those before. In the midst of all of that, how could she believe otherwise?

Consider, for example, this passage from Kanwaljit Kaur’s “Communal Violence in Princely States during Partition” in which she writes that, on August 15^th in the east Punjab state of Patiala, “…500 rioters including police and troops in uniform attacked Mohalla Kucha Rangrazan and killed 1000 Muslims.” Kaur writes that, in Patiala, “the Muslims who constituted 1/3 of its population was virtually wiped out or expelled.” The state’s maharajah’s efforts to curtail the violence were hampered by the reports of what Muslims were doing to Hindus and Sikhs elsewhere. Kaur sums up the extent and effect of the carnage when she writes that the “…people in princely states were butchered mercilessly on a massive scale. The violent Communal riots, murders and heinous crimes brought the people’s morale to the lowest ebb.”

At this low point, Pritam does what poets do: turn to poetry. In another line given from her autobiography, she writes of the Partition’s horrors that they “…would take a lifetime to retell.” She understands a poet attempting to tell the tale must do so in only a few lines. In turning to her art, Pritam invokes the spirit of one of its most illustrious practitioners, the 18^th century Punjabi poet Waris Shah, and addresses her words to him as a plea for his indulgence. “Too Waris Shah I turn today!”, she begins. The man who wrote not just of love but of great love must give aid in the age of great hate. Speaking of a woman of whom Shah wrote, Pritam reminds him that “When one daughter of the Punjab did cry / You filled pages with songs of lamentation,” and informs him that “Today a hundred daughters cry.”

From that point on, Pritam’s “Ode to Waris Shah” is – itself – a lament. Nearly every line of the poem recounts a tragedy of the Partition, but it is not the great ones that stand out, not the lines that tell the reader that “Corpses are strewn on the pasture / Blood runs in the Chenab.” It is the seemingly small things that loom large:

Song was crushed in every throat:

Every spinning wheel’s thread was snapped:

Friends parted from one another

The hum of spinning wheels fell silent.

So at a lost is Pritam by what is happening that she feels compelled to implore the great poet to “Open your grave / Write a new page / In the book of love.”

I am yet reminded of those lines from Horace when reading the words of a woman escaping with her children from certain death. “If they find you in the house, they will burn it so you come outside. Then they catch you and chop you with the machete.” This woman had to flee from an area where there had been “…widespread rape, dismemberment of victims, [and] the kidnapping of small children.” This is not a tale from 1947, but one appearing on the front page of The Washington Post newspaper only three weeks ago. It is just one tale from the people now fleeing across Lake Albert from the Congo to Uganda to escape the slaughter of the Hema by the Lendu. Just yesterday, the Post’s front page featured a photograph of Central American migrants who — fleeing violence — are seeking asylum at our southern border. I think of Horace once again because of the rest of what he had to say. After having described his generation as being “more worthless” than the one before, he follows that by concluding “so in our turn / we shall give the world / a progeny yet more corrupt.”

I find it doubtful that any generation of our species has been, is, or will be either more or less “worthless” than any other. I suppose one would have to read much more of Amrita Pritam’s work to determine whether she found any hope in the aftermath of the Partition. It would be understandable if, instead, she — like Horace – concluded that the human condition is destined to worsen with each successive generation, but her “Ode to Waris Shah” reminds us of places to turn for hope.