O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Tuhin Bhowal
Never Against Those Visions of Sin
(Khan-i-Khanan, December 2024)
Demands of this domain are met by hands:
Precede, precede, recede, such weak intent.
Assail is to control, stressed the old Greeks;
You, death’s long dream—relent, before you forget.
Demands of this domain are defiled by hands…
The tomb, pristine, still stands clear of those trees;
Lemons glimmer false belief, leaves must try—
I, my pyrrhic haste, fails, even without bees.
And yet, who seeks demands of this domain?
Your holy Ream of pages repeats it six
Times: ferric mind, ferrous cat, wisdom white;
The year learns from experience, not semantics:
Small hands hold rain towards your sapphic heaven,—
When will you learn, my god, how mouths open?
About the writer:
Tuhin Bhowal is a writer, translator, and editor working between three languages: Hindi, Bengali, and English. Recipient of the Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Poetry Prize 2022, his poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in The Margins, Ballast Journal, Redivider, and elsewhere. Bhowal lives alone in Bangalore and tweets @tuhintranslates.
About Abdul Rahim (Khan-i-Khanan):
Abdul Rahim (1556-1627), bearer of the title Khan-i-Khanan, was a poet and translator and one of the nine important ministers in Mughal Emperor Akbar’s court. Rahim was known for his Hindustani dohe (couplets) , his translations of important literary works, and his books on astrology, as well as for his political and military actions on behalf of his Emperor. His tomb in New Delhi is important historically, culturally, and architecturally. It is often compared to the Taj Mahal in beauty and majesty and was recently the subject of one of the largest conservation/restoration projects ever undertaken in India. After six years of restoration conducted under the sponsorship of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the tomb/monument was opened to the public in 2020.
Image: Monument of the Mirza Khan (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
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