Train to Agra
I want to reach you—
in that city where the snow
only shimmers silver
for a few hours. It has taken
seventeen years. This trip,
these characters patterned
in black ink, curves catching
on the page like hinges,
this weave of letters fraying
like the lines on my palm,
all broken paths. Outside,
no snow. Just the slow pull
of brown on the hills, umber
dulling to a bruise until the city
is just a memory of stained teeth,
the burn of white marble
to dusk, cows standing
on the edges like a dust
cloud gaining weight
after days of no rain. Asleep
in the hot berth, my parents
sway in a dance, the silence
broken by scrape of tin, hiss
of tea, and underneath,
the constant clatter of wheels
beating steel tracks over and over:
to the city of white marble,
to the city of goats, tobacco
fields, city of dead hands,
a mantra of my grandmother's—
her teeth eaten away
by betel leaves—the story
of how Shah Jahan had cut off
all the workers' hands
after they built the Taj, so they
could never build again. I dreamt
of those hands for weeks before
the trip, weeks even before I
stepped off the plane, thousands
of useless dead flowers drying
to sienna, silent in their fall.
Every night, days before, I dreamt
those hands climbing over the iron
gate of my grandparents' house, over
grate and spikes, some caught
in the groove between its sharpened
teeth, others biting where
they pinched my skin.
Vandana Khanna, "Train to Agra" from Train to Agra. Copyright © 2001 by Vandana Khanna. Reprinted by permission of Southern Illinois University Press.
Source:
Train to Agra
(Southern Illinois University Press, 2001)