Contest entries old and new

The secret son

The secret son

The battle raged day and night
to decide what is wrong and what is right
The five Pandava princes on one side
against hundred cousins ruthless and wild.

The warriors camped after a hard day’s fight,
the weary rivals lay down blanketed by the night.
In her lonely camp, Kunti, the mother of five
cried desperate tears, for victory is in not in sight.

Her secret son, the invincible Karna, the finest archer
in the enemy army, determined to quell and conquer
his own blood brothers, unknown to him and others.
A mother’s heart fell apart, her anguished cries smothered.

She has but one option; to beg her abandoned son
to spare his half-brothers in the battle raging on.
Will Karna listen to her who had forsaken him
unable to face the world ostracizing her for her sin?

As a maiden of fourteen, she conceived him out of wedlock,
her infant son, bright and beautiful left her in a state of shock.
Helpless, she placed him in a casket new, saw it floating on the river,
unknown to her was picked up by a childless couple, with pleasure.

Karna, they called him, born with golden eardrops, a winsome warrior,
destined to be a hero, a man of charity and an unparalleled archer.

When faced with challenges due to contempt and class discrimination,
he was befriended by the mighty king of Kurus, knowing his distinction.

Soon he rose to heights of glory only to be used by the cunning king
as a pawn against  his cousins, whom he drove to exile by cheating
in a gambling match and claiming the ill-begotten prize of seizing
their kingdom, power and wealth.  On their return after years of living

incognito, they claimed their legal rights on their part of the land.
The evil despot denied them even a fraction, causing things to fall apart.
So the battle began and caused death and destruction of the near and dear,
leaving the field with massacred bodies and wailing widows in endless tears.

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Kunti walks through desolation and dismay to Karna’s camp.
“Son of mine!” she says, her face sorrowful in the flicker of a lamp.
“Am I?” he asks, his eyes, damp and turbulent with untold misery.
He neither rebuked nor questioned her former deeds of no mercy.

“Take pity on my sons, your brothers sharing blood bonds.
Come back to us and let victory be ours, not blood hounds’.”

Without hesitation or high emotion, her secret son replied
“Mother of mine, the king stood by my side in joy and strife.
Deserting him in this hour of need, crosses not my mind
the best way to pay my debt of gratitude is to fight and die”.

Kunti, disillusioned, thus failed in her mission of gaining back
a son she couldn’t embrace or admit to the world at large.
Mistakes rooted in desire and haste, do deliver divine justice.
She suffered further more, witnessing Karna’s end, sad and luckless.



Written for The Long Poetry Contest – August 2025

Basic source: The Mahabharata