I

She was a ruby in a turban of dust,
A pulse in the palm of the plain,
The emperors leaned on her with trust,
And history knelt in her train.
Her minarets pierced the river-blue sky,
Each sacred ascent an unwithering cry.
Chroniclers salted her name with praise,
Called her the garden of might;
The jeweled bride of the Mughals
Burned in a lacquer of saffron days.

II

Then something entered her blood like rust,
The caravans thinned to the bone.
Wind worried the lattice, the silk, the dust –
A queen in a mausoleum of stone.
Her mosques grew hoarse from unanswered breath,
Their domes like skulls in the sun;
The streets lay stunned in a hush of death,
The festivals abruptly undone.
A lion* once circled her broken throne,
Tried stitching the crown to her head.
But gold once scattered is never sown,
And glory does not raise the dead.

III

Then came the surgeons with silver thread,
No swords, only a plan.
They looked at her fever and coolly said:
“We shall improve this span.”
They found the wasteland beyond her wall,
A carcass of kiln and clay,
And there they drafted her second fall,
Polite as a ledger’s sway.
They laced her fields into ruler-straight veins,
Bled curves from her tangled side;
They built white ribs for imperial brains,
And called the incision pride.
Pillars in symmetry stood,
Calm as imported law;
Gardens were disciplined into good,
Each hedge a moral saw.
The crooked lane was a native flaw.
The crowded heart, disease.
They measured her breath with a foreign awe
And trimmed it to overseas ease.

IV

Brick was doctrine.
Stone was creed.
Change the dwelling,
change the need,
change what the dwellers mean.
Wide roads bred wide, obedient thought,
Trim lawns tutored the will.
A city corrected was a people taught
To stand composed and never revolt.
They did not only alter her face,
They entered the marrow of mind.
They taught her children a different grace,
Left older instincts behind.
The new halls hummed with commerce and ink,
With finance, grammar, decree;
Yet under the plaster you could still think
You heard an older plea.

V

And now she is argued like disputed flame,
A prize in parliamentary air;
Men lift and lower her ancient name
As though it were theirs to repair.
“Unfurl the kites,” one voice insists,
“Let spring set the heavens ablaze!”
Another sneers at the colored mists,
Calls it “a circus. A reckless craze.”
They draft decrees on when she may
Remember how to sing;
They ration joy by cautious day
And leash the winds of spring.
Modernity hums over ancient stones,
Steel and mortar veil her tones;
Who traces the sigh of streets discreet,
The Lahore they possess, yet cannot meet.