The Taj Mahal & My Love Poem by Suman Pokhrel

Through years of my prime
I walked with a heart
crazy about love.

I wanted my heart to bloom
and shelter a shadow of love.
when the heart was soaked in passion
and was wet,
I wanted to wrench it dry
on love itself.
I wanted to paint a picture,
in indelible print, across
the canvass of my heart.

I stand today
in front of the Taj Mahal.
I watch the marble smiling
as the sunlight gives it a touch.
I feel gusts of wind
gone mad
as they come across
the heights of love here.
I listen to the music, waking in
the dream-eyed visitors' quiet hearts.

I am tipsy after my
own feelings
themselves have become wine.
I forget myself, world and all.

I don't know
whether I'm thinking of Shah Jahan,
Mumtaj or myself.
I'm quite disillusioned, stupefied,
enveloped under an expanding heart.

Shah Jahan who proved
an emperor to be shorter than a lover,
who turned a grave into a temple
who gave his beloved a place of God
and converted love into a prayer.

there exists one difference between
us two.
he was all in all, and if
I'd ever grown prosperous like he was,
I'd not have waited for my beloved's death
before I erected a Taj Mahal.


(Translated from Nepali by Manu Manjil)