The Taj Mahal & My Love
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 Shah Jahan was,
I'd not have waited for my beloved's death
before I erected a Taj Mahal.
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Translated from Nepali by Manu Manjil
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