Pyres of Vermilion

Hooves have marched up the moat The glint through an eclipse – a rounded deceit Black flags ululate the kohl-rimmed hearts Burns the muslin Queen with the other rajputanis In pyres of vermilion. Tormented flesh, the scattered Taj, Looted gold, slaves handcuffed. The Sultan’s mighty, is this how he loves? His savagery proliferates Branding surrendered arms, the royal Darbar The war cry has long bled the emblem, all sons Headless heap now, trumpetless coronation A dawn the eyes refuse, the leftovers mourn But behold the spirited revolt of a spitted-tamarind Tearing apart the damasked earth, silently besieged.

The day the men rolled cowries to save their kingdom They pledged a woman as a luminous token The day the white soldiers hulled their victory The nautch girls bled between the sheets The day little Nawab sprinkled some Old Spice The hopscotching girl grew to manage her neckline The day the clerk was sent back home His wife was handcuffed as a gelded goat, later made to please Who says a man cannot cry, can’t feel? Scuttle for his emotions in a woman’s sufferings.

Betelnut tucked between her molars The courtesan anklets him forth In her glass chamber, trades Scarletrose, sherbet and secret scrolls For a night that dunks the sickled moon on his face Coins cannot bend her lustrous gait She’s a woman who can write Dohas and ghazals are quilled on her walls, on floors-redoxide Banished from domestication, even the grave The Englishman’s promise can assail her shame A lantern burns, gathers undereye soot all night A new poet will be birthed in the land of Tennyson afar But she blew the callowed conch that night Gunpowdered blood of her countrymen, she smelled on his hide The surrendered uniform, although, the town remembered Was suffered by the Englishman’s love for a fallen woman