@ This Would Be A Mirror Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Growing on its roots, the city flapped
Like green leaves in a dampened evening
These trunks bear the aroma of a river
On both side of the canal road.
The falling walls oozed an age gone
Since a slow ruin, since a new rise.
Many a beauties had sung its laments
It did not look eye to eye, neither had it wept.
A slow caravan, approaching the destination,
A once Queen of India, and an Emperor
Chose it their eternal abode, on the bank of the river.
A hall of mirrors and yellow stones
Water falls in the palace in the grand fort
An imposter’s envy, stealing stones and his queen
In a prison, sans the beauty of a Mughal garden.
This would be a mirror,
Of all other cities, and people say, see Lahore
And you have seen Delhi. Or may be Agra.
My erstwhile love lived in Bangalore;
She knows it. A day, that she be my host, I her guest.
Will it ever be. We live in transported realities, overwhelmed.
Though she once appeared in grace, we were talking
About the Emperor’s love. The Queen would make him
The evening’s drink, celebrating the monsoon sunset.
The Queen, named Noor Jehan, the air is still filled
With the scent of her perfumed tresses,
Which all the girls in the city wear, all women, all queens.
I had dreamt a queen, her fingers on sitar,
Before a rising sun, I had prayed also, after a long night
She is hidden in the walls of my heart like Anar Kali, dead.
Saints, heretics, princes and kings,
I found myself standing in the Lakshmi chowk.
Though the face was lifted, the back was in ruins.
I was gazing from a Mughal facade
A long line of headlights, red lights
I was carrying a whole history of culture
Visiting just a part of it, for a single night.
On the way back I was empty headed.
I could have been living here,
And unlike all other cities that I fall in love with
This was so near yet so far away.