Taj Mahal Poem by PRATHAP KAMATH

I

Until yesterday, Taj Mahal had been
a mothball-scented dream
clapped between catnaps
in long-forgotten history classrooms.

‘One of the seven wonders of the world’
bared the teeth of a hyena-phrase
should I stray closer to spread
love on a white marble nook.

Today a moat of viscous paradox
closes in where my eyes fail to open
while awareness burns the mind.

The monument groans in domed delight
(I can only hear, only hear)
under the thrusting heat of an April sun,

milky marble fires radiance
slaying the poet’s ambition
to see, to see, that calls to be.


II

Upon the first sun-engorged step
laser blades of beauty
minarets and the high dome shot
struck me rock-still. Ears opened
to a wonderland of voices.
Amidst the Babel of tourists
a crescendo of sighs and moans
belonging to an age of precious stones
rose to the sky like a colossal wave.
What were its crests and troughs?

The murmurs of a woman dying young;
the midnight whimper of a regal husband
who toiled to recreate the dead
in the cool air of sepulchral spaces,
fountains, lawns and gardens;
or, the down-breaths of pain
given by dark sun burnt men
slaving for the imperial crown
for which mourning had been
an alibi to cement its glory?


III

Between the mausoleum that lives
more in photographs than in minds
and the Fort of Agra in whose
windy durbars it was conceived
a sun-fret Yamuna flowed
like trickle from pining eyes.

The binoculars caught a dove
in meditation on top a minaret
while the ears the cooing of an unseen one
getting nearer, nearer all the time.
To the denuded eyes only a bland
blue sky flinging needles of light
from beyond the upright stillness.

What is Taj Mahal?
How much phantom
how much marble?

Outside history’s fairyland
beggars, dust, and ruined roads.