Champawat

after Jim Corbett, Man-eaters of Kumaon

In the jungles of Kumaon
a darkness descended
in the form of a tigress.

She came from the windswept
forests of Nepal, having taken
two hundred lives.
Soldiers hunted for her,
and she fled to find a new kingdom.

She prowled the fields
around Champawat,
stalking those who strayed
too far from their homes.
She pounced on them
while they gathered dried leaves,
to drag them off into a ravine,
leaving trails of crimson in her wake.

Her roars rumbled
along the road at night,
and her prey shivered in their huts.
The tigress grew bloated
on human flesh,
but another two hundred lives
could not satisfy her.

A pool of fresh blood,
a shattered blue necklace.
The tigress drags her newest kill,
a girl of sixteen,
into the forested ravine.
A severed, abandoned leg
turns the water red.
A rustling in the scrub.
She growls, snarls, retreats into the brush.
She can smell a man's scent.

She follows a stream to the ridge,
but her hunter is persistent.
That night she feasts,
but come the morning drums echo
from the trop of the ridge.
She awakens to see
her pursuers in the marsh.

Two rounds from a shotgun,
and one round from a rifle
send her tearing up the hill.
The drums beat louder,
voices chanting in a frenzy.
She rounds on her enemies
and charges her undaunted pursuer.

A blast, and the tigress stops.
A second blast and she flinches,
ears flattened and bared teeth.
She flees for a rock,
but her hunter is not deterred.
He is the last thing she sees
before the final blast.

The drums turn silent,
the chanting reaches fever-pitch,
and the tigress lies still,
staring up at the hunter
with lightless amber eyes.

Rudraprayag

after Jim Corbett, The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag

There is a road in the mountains
between Badrinath and Kerdanath.
Shrines that sheltered pilgrims
for thousands of years.
The road now shelters no one.

Flu-ravaged corpses lined the banks
of two rivers nourished by glaciers.
Coals sat in their mouths
to absorb the stench of death.

The corpses' flesh filled
the stomach of leopard.
The road fell under its shadow.
For eight years it prowled
through the mountains

and found prey in every village.
It leapt through windows,
snatching infants from their cribs
with barely a noise,
just silence remaining.

One of those villages
became its favourite haunt.
A small place on the road,
huddled in between the river
and a forested mountain.

The houses of Rudraprayag are
still. Goats bleat uneasily, while
cows stare dumfounded into the gloom.
A lantern on the headman's porch
cools from the heat of its flame.

A shadow crosses the threshold.
It rips and slashes the locked door,
breaking it down with force of hunger.
Gnarled teeth plunge into the soft throat
so only a whisper escapes.
It tears the man from his bed
into the cover of the night.

(Hi guys, the Tiger Poet here. Hope you enjoyed this poem, there are plenty more on their way. It's been very quiet these last few months, but hope you all had a good summer. See you soon.)