Shah-Jahan

You knew, the Emperor of India, Shah-Jahan

That life, youth, wealth, renown

All float away down the stream of time

Your only dream

Was to preserve forever your heart’s pain

The harsh thunder of imperial power

Would fade into sleep

Like a sunset’s crimson splendour

But it was your hope

That atleast a single, eternally-heaved sigh would stay

To grieve the sky

Though emeralds, rubies, pearls are all

But as the glitter of a rainbow tricking out empty air

And must pass away

Yet still one solitary tear

Would hang on the cheek of time

In the form

Of this white and gleaming Taj Mahal

O human heart,

You have no time

To look back at anyone again 

No time

You are driven by life’s quick spate

On and on from landing to landing,

Loading cargo here,

Unloading there

In your garden the south wind’s murmurs

May enchant spring ‘madhabi’ creepers

Into suddenly filling your quivering lap with flowers

Their petals are scattered in the dust come twilight

You have no time

You raise from the dew of another night

New blossom in your groves, in jasmine

To dress with tearful gladness the votive tray

Of a later season

O human heart

All that you gather is thrown 

To the edge of the path by the end of each night and day

You have no time to look back again

No time, no time

Thus, Emperor, you wished,

Fearing your own heart’s forgetfulness

To conquer time’s heart

Through beauty

How wonderful the deathless clothing

With which you invested

Formless death – how it was garlanded!

You could not maintain

Your grief forever, and so you enmeshed

Your restless weeping

In bonds of silent perpetuity

The names you softly

Whispered to your love

On moonlit nights in secret chambers live on

Here

As whispers in the ear of eternity

The poignant gentleness of love

Flowered into the beauty of serene stone

Poet – Emperor

This is your heart’s picture

Your new ‘Meghaduta’ 

Soaring with marvellous, unprecedented melody and line

Towards the unseen plane

On which your loverless beloved

And the first glow of sunrise

And the last sigh of sunset

And the disembodied beauty of moonlit ‘cameli’ flower

And the gateway on the edge of language

That turns away man’s wistful gaze again and again

Are all blended

This beauty is your messenger,

Skirting time’s sentries

To carry the wordless message

“I have not forgotten you, my love, I have not forgotten you”

You are gone, now, Emperor

Your empire has dissolved like a dream

Your throne is shattered

Your armies whose marching

Shook the earth

Today have no more weight than the windblown dust on the Delhi road

Your singers no longer sing for you

Your musicians no longer mingle their tunes

With the lapping Jumna

The jingle of the anklets of your women

Has died from your palaces

The night sky moans

With the throb

Of crickets in their crumbling corners

But your tireless, incorruptible, messenger

Speaks to us with sombre melody

“Stare no matter how distantly

That traveller is no longer here, no longer here

His beloved kept him not

His realms released him

Neither sea nor mountain could bar him

Today his chariot

Travels at the beck of the night

To the song of the stars

Towards the gate of dawn

I remain here weighted with memory

He is free of burdens; he is no longer here

-Rabindranath Tagore