Charminar Evenings

 I saw its time-worn dusk

Gave in to its Muezzin's call for prayer

I sank in its verses and pictured,

When they were adding the bricks

And slipping mortar into the Minarets

Did it bring nights this gentle and kind.

Evoked in a soul by now humbled

The echoes of an epoch gone by

Charmed under an evening unchanged,

Through the hawkers' pleadings

And the bangles in whose sheen

Memories of swords and songs

Were shining and dying

© Anupam