CENOTAPH AT ORCHHA

                                    Hen-speckled haunt, those royal chatris,

                                    hallowed stone hollowed, visages gaunt as

                                    bronzed old sages, knuckling the azure

                                    with domes, turrets crowned with cupolas

like military helmets spiked for war

yet commanding still, for the Betwa’s

boulders break and branch the rapids’ rush

Sole wanderer about Orchha’s Bundela mort

I sensed the creeping stealth of dust

that stifles a bastion’s sandstone screens

and the lattice-work of jaded trees

filleting mortar of stone to must

Here, red stone renders its Rajput flush

like a battle-notched soldier with malarial eye

Domes that once aspired shrug crestfallen

and the fourfold symmetry of Persian garden

is dulled by the maharajas’ redounding hush

Stone bare without tomb, the sanctum,

void of idol, scrollwork, encrusted gems

rose garlands or the Quran’s most sacred quotes

More armoury than mausoleum;

monkey danna dropped as grapeshot

Yet pairs of paramours, green parakeets

undulate on timeless tides of air

A black-baubled hive blobs a corbel’s eave

squirrels scat the skirt of walls in bursts

and stonework still breathes the living past

Above, flouncing the finials and aery vaults

white-smudged ghosts from some eerie domain:

enormity of wing, things supra-normal

draggled griffons on retracted stilts

or gargoyles freed from frieze of capitals

scarce fail to lure in more lucid light

                        Raptors!

on crescent glide, quoin to parapet

wheeling upward, riding the thermals’ ease

with neither panache nor ceaseless beat

And there, regaling the roosted turret

redoubted on extended lease

a maharani, cowled swan-necked

beneath the curve of cupola’s tight fit

framed by fluted columns and cordoned

but rebuffs her mate with ruffle and fluffs;

he hovers the ledge but curtain he flubs

Shunting up wedges of stone shin-barked

tenter-hooked for toehold, scalp scotched

shoulders cramped in tight-tunnel spiral

I stumbled out, breathless:  the arched

view plumbed through the parallel

chatris aligned:  cool passageways

and multiple symmetry a Mughal legacy

Now I descried, over curtain’s edge

one grey fluffball hatch cadging

neath mother’s coverts buff-etched

Sidling the fall below the unwalled terrace

my gaze followed shadows to the cornice

A bee-buzz of furies, kamikaze fliers

bottle-green, bombing a feathery carcass

About death, one wonders the winds of karma

Becalmed, this vulture, lapsed in grace

buff pinions and wedge tail ruched

gorget of mottled grey and whitish ruff

sable wings neatly tucked

scalpel finally hooked

Not one sign of crash-landing, broken wing

disease or blood.  Even in death, its long

stemmed legs lay demurely parallel

To these airborne untouchables

the Parsis undertake their own: carrion

for vultures to pick clean at sky burial

Towers of Silence, bone envy of jackals

‘Tis said, 'All touched by dead matter befouls.'

Touched, my vulture’s bald head I tagged

and left the dance of death to frantic raga

                                                Michael Small

April 5-18, 2009