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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#समनपखरल #SumanPokhrel