inside — outside

walls, doors, window frames,

cordoned graves,

humayun’s tomb

grand, untamed,

extends out to the edges

of Delhi’s constrained

infinities;

sandstone bathed

in blood and pain;

columns that seek to break

out from in between the teeth

the Sky keeps clenched

to not let the renegades

escape into his infinities.

Infinities within infinities—

histories within histories—

and I hide several within

which tremble at the strain

of those larger than themselves

whenever I visit

did I say where—

Humayun’s tomb.

A testament to the reign

of the second in command

of those that had

the World prostrating in their trail;

a testament to the failed

grandeur of the name

that now lies crumpled on

pages of rewritten history;

a testament to dragged—

through—the—streets—

she—paved irony.