TRIP  TO  THE  TAJ  MAHAL 

Poem for Today - Tuesday - December 30, 2014

TRAIN TO AGRA

I want to reach you—

in that city where the snow

only shimmers silver

for a few hours. It has taken

seventeen years. This trip, 

these characters patterned

in black ink, curves catching 

on the page like hinges,

this weave of letters fraying 

like the lines on my palm,

all broken paths. Outside, 

no snow. Just the slow pull

of brown on the hills, umber 

dulling to a bruise until the city

is just a memory of stained teeth, 

the burn of white marble

to dusk, cows standing 

on the edges like a dust

cloud gaining weight

after days of no rain. Asleep

in the hot berth, my parents 

sway in a dance, the silence

broken by scrape of tin, hiss 

of tea, and underneath,

the constant clatter of wheels

beating steel tracks over and over:

to the city of white marble, 

to the city of goats, tobacco

fields, city of dead hands,

a mantra of my grandmother's—

her teeth eaten away

by betel leaves—the story

of how Shah Jahan had cut off

all the workers' hands

after they built the Taj, so they 

could never build again. I dreamt

of those hands for weeks before 

the trip, weeks even before I

stepped off the plane, thousands 

of useless dead flowers drying

to sienna, silent in their fall. 

Every night, days before, I dreamt

those hands climbing over the iron 

gate of my grandparents' house, over

grate and spikes, some caught

in the groove between its sharpened

teeth, others biting where 

they pinched my skin.

Vandana Khanna, 

"Train to Agra"

from Train to Agra. 

Copyright © 2001

by Vandana Khanna.