A Wizened Speaks

On the breaches of a lake,
At the foot o’ the mounts,
A wizened spake:
Of times far past,
Of memories before the Raj.

***

Of royalty that never believed.
A greater power that had come
To annex, but through his child’s fair hand.
To consent would be to lose:
His life, land and all that ever was his.

Blighted by his queens’ capacity,
He was the lost, the loser and the loner.
If not for the story the wizened spake,
I would have left in a trice, elsewhere.

A Moghul’s hate of temples
And all that was Hindu,
As sweet to the royal ears,
As nectar from a raided hive.

The hills were moved,
And in a month, they did it.
‘Twas the most splendid thing that
Human eyes did ever behold.
Aah! The senses would fail,
Just imagining its columns.

Thank’d did the convert, and erected
The serpent umbrella’d
As high as the temple spire.

The army came, and went.
The disgusted guest did speak of alliance,
But with a land nearby.

The signature of a lost wonder,
Lies as dust, now under
The form of the meeting tusks.

***

Saying so, did the wizened shift
His eyes upon the peak;

And vanish into the rising mist.