City of postcards

The plane begins its descent
past the customary carpeting of sepia clouds,
the city welcomes and beckons for the passengers with a turbulent jostling.
Colorful and dilapidated roofs play peek-a-boo with floating scarves and sheets.
Each passing second, 
as the ground rises,
individual houses and buildings become more legible.
There’s Home! Near the pond that’s off-limits.
Below us are the local markets, with drooping tarpaulin shades. 
The ambience is electrifying, everyone’s haggling and going about the stalls,
reflecting the intensity of the summer heat.
Under the gaze of behemoth columns,
some polished like jade, 
others—golden, but dust speckled;
crying out for monsoonal tears,
but all rich with commercial hullabaloo;
The ground floors are dark and riddled with back-alleys, 
but alive with printing shops and currency exchanges.
However, a different play is written above;
Elevators rush up and down like ants on a decrepit hill
(where the plasters are rotting away).
The bird’s eye-view traces out certain nerve centers. 
Streams of vehicles ceaselessly plying through;
merging, turning and braking.
Under the dull July sky,
Herds of monsoonal days come and set up shop,
Chase away the warmer, slower days of the beating sun.
The city, blanketed in dust and gravel
gets an inundated makeover.
Yet, as the warm tarmac embraces the wheels,
all the stories take up crutches and,
is submerged
within ourselves. 

Aryan Shafat is a young Bangladeshi poet. He is a second year student at UWC Atlantic College, Wales.