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.

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