Rainfall

It is quiet down there
With echoes sleeping lightly on its tether-
Save when, through the still air,
Footfalls break, sharp crack after crack,
Of bursting globes, of stillness set close together,
In a far fading line.
It is quiet down there
But for the rain's faint whispering,
The street is lonely where there might have lingered
Women and men with voices distant, low:
Now the rain only
Light, cool-fingered,
Drips from the trees, drips, drips.
I at my window am lonely:
My thoughts are ships
Which know not whence they come nor wither go,
Sailing forever on the lonely seas,
Forever to and fro. . . .

From - Rainfall : Summer Evening By Geoffrey West

Nakhlau (Lucknow)

Lines in praise of Nakhlau (from Qaiyum)

Well it is known to all the peoples of the earth that the city of Nakhlau (which the vulgar and the rough-toungued called Lakhnau, or One Hundred Thousand Boats) stands without equal for the beauty of its gateways, and the majesty of its walls, the grace of its towers, the sheen of its domes, the lustre of its meanest dwellings washed with lime and shimmering under an indigo sky. Who has not heard of Chowk, with its heaven-embracing markets loaded with silks and incense, sugar and mangoes, its colonnades festooned with peacocks, its fragrant stares washed hourly with crimson juices? Here, veiled, pass heart-expanding women with chaplets of flowers and comely boys with languid gait. Here are bejewelled elephants and haughty eunuchs, there frolic charioteers and vegetable lamps. Here are pannikins of crushed pearls, trays heavy with sweetmeats, the mouth-rejoicing gulab jamun, the tongue delighting jalebi, the tooth-vibrating kulfi, the universe-arresting Sandila ladoo; there are philtres, a thousand roses distilled in a vial; here again are gossamer bodices, chikan-worked, of which a courtesan may put on twelve and still not be modestly clad.

To Slaughter

Peoples will be as before, the sheep sent to the slaughterhouses or to the meadows as it pleases the shepherds - Henri La Fontaine

Gatka

Definition of Post

post @dictionary.com
-noun

1. a strong piece of timber, metal, or the like, set upright as a support, a point of attachment, a place for displaying notices, etc.