Looking at the Taj Mahal from Agra Fort

no one heard the wailing of metal over marble 

that afternoon, the masonry of agony 

was too persuasive in its percussion 

for ears to intrude and decipher its pain. 

the worn-out workers, too, seemed unaware 

of the plaintive cries the palpitating walls made 

as their hands toiled and hammered 

at this ashen-faced monument 

to imperial anguish. 

slow patricide was how the story unfolded eventually, 

and the river became a witness 

to the slaughtering that took place, 

while shaking the earth from his axis 

the chasm like river had its own version 

of what happened, and the crying calligraphies 

on the walls simply digressed into poetry 

to explain this mournful mausoleum’s demise 

into an imperial anecdote.