SHAH JAHAN

Shah Jahan's queen, Mumtaz Mahal,
Had seventeen pregnancies in all.
Fourteen were live births.
She died in childbirth.
Jahan built her the Taj Mahal.

Nineteen years they were married.
Three times the queen miscarried.
Twenty-three years the project took.
When you're in Agra, take a look.
From Makrana the marble was quarried.

The Taj makes us assume
Mumtaz needed a big tomb
Most three hundred feet tall,
Of marble with inlaid walls
And with plenty of room.

This monument so fair
Built with the greatest of care
Is the ultimate sublimity,
And it had perfect symmetry
Till he was in it interred.

The shah lived on broken hearted
Over the loss of his queen departed.
And imagine how disappointed
When his third son self-annointed
And a new reign started.

As the shah lived on in Agra Fort,
I can, having been there, report
He looked out on the Taj Mahal
Wherein lay Muntaz Mahal
Until he, too, was mort.

Those who in the Taj have been
Know it holds both shah and queen
Down below those coffins false,
Surrounded by those marble walls,
Where it's tourist free and, no doubt, serene.