In the Halls of the Mughal Kings

A fading comet trail of snippets from the halls of the Mughal Kings remain immortally enshrined in memory's space.

Former capital, you Stand tallunder the continuous canter of the seasons.

Impregnable against time's infantry,

with erect and smooth sandstone walls, bathed red by the beating sun for centuries.

Inside the Kingdom, lay smooth lawns: glossy green sheets with an emerald hue, maintained impeccably,

guarded by lustrous bushes in lemon coloured helmets.

Inside, lay the Jama Masjid resting on infinite arches, embellished with infinite domes.

Inside, rests Salim Chisty's tomb of dazzling, spotless, pearl white marble, effortlessly reflecting the tepid winter sun.

Strings, of rainbows, dance to the congregation of followers: a sea of people with an ocean of prayers.

Amidst an eternal storm,

dreams and thoughts, long buried in time's graveyard, appear as apparitions.

Tansen's songs rise like waves, his tunes of silk, weave through the air like an aurora.

They reach for and enthrall the winds ceaselessly.

Settled at the centre, the imposing palace.

A five-tiered pyramid, tinted dusty red.

Neat, patterned columns raise up one another,

supporting the Dome-

The Dome of perpetual youth.

Echoes of Greatness ring throughout the city, they usher forth from the grandiose BulandDarwaza,

pour out from the palace gates.

Knocking on walls, resonating from the chirps of birds, the Grandness is omnipresent,

in every breath,

splendour immerses the Kingdom.

Looming on the banks of the Yamuna,

Slithering trails ominously course through the brown, desolate and dismal fields, ravaged by Winter, to:

A city

Adorned with amulets bearing inscriptions of false promises,

Showered upon by a mellow, tropical sun in winter's foggy cloak,

the skyline is invisible.

The numerous, quaint sweetshops are drenched with scents of syrup.

Sounds of sizzling sweets waft through the dense night air,

While on display, are sweets, in assortments of colours, embroidered with history.

Aromas of incense and flower petals emanate from the temples,

the tintinnabulationfrom the bells isa swarm,hidden in the distance.

Once daylight's head juts out from the horizon,

embraces all the nooks and alleys,

sets alight the city

there,

standing majestically beside Yamuna's bank

shrouded in a thick smog coat,

Almost unaffected by time's abrasion,

surrounded by lanky, leaning minarets,

turbaned with a gargantuan bulbous dome, glazed in shimmering white,

composed of the world's stones and sun's corona,

the tip dipped in gold:

the Shining tomb of cold marble, with a beating heart.

Winter is absent here.

Only a floating, warm aura.

Spring flowers in eternal bloom, are etched in the stones and granite.

Mere, enchanted dwarves converge at the tomb: cupid's pilgrimage site.

Aryan Shafat is a young Bangladeshi poet. He studies at UWC Atlantic College, Wales.