I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems

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I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems Page 15

by Rabindranath Tagore

Tomorrow’s market day.

  Just ask the maid

  to get some paper and a pen.

  You’ll see, I’ll make no mistakes;

  from ka and kha to cerebral na

  I’ll write Dad’s letter for him, I promise!

  Come on, Mum, what’s the meaning of that smile?

  You think, don’t you, I can never write

  as good a hand as Dad can?

  I’ll draw the lines first,

  then the rest big and neat.

  When you see it, you won’t believe it!

  When the letter’s written,

  d’you think I’d be silly

  like Dad and put it in the bag?

  Never! Myself

  I’ll read it out to you,

  for they don’t deliver good letters.

  [Rainy season 1903?]

  Hide-and-Seek

  If I played a naughty trick on you, Mum,

  and flowered as a champa on a champa tree,

  and at sunrise, upon a branch,

  had a good play among the young leaves,

  then you’d lose, and I’d be the winner,

  for you wouldn’t recognise me.

  You’d call, ‘Khoka, where are you?’

  I’d just smile quietly.

  All jobs you do in the morning

  I’d watch with my eyes wide open.

  After your bath, damp hair loose on your back,

  you’d walk this way, under the champa tree.

  From here you’d go to the chapel

  and smell flowers from afar –

  you wouldn’t know that it was

  the smell of your Khoka’s body in the air.

  At noontime, when everyone’s had their lunch,

  you’d sit down, the Mahabharat in your hands.

  Through the window the tree’s shade

  would fall on your back, on your lap.

  I’d bring my little shadow close to you

  and sway it softly on your book –

  you wouldn’t know that it was

  your Khoka’s shadow moving before your eyes.

  In the evening you’d light a lamp

  and go to the cow-shed, Mum.

  Then would I, my flower-play done,

  fall down plonk on the ground.

  Once again I’d become your little boy,

  go up to you and say, ‘Tell me a story.’

  You’d say, ‘Naughty! Where have you been all day?’

  I’d say, ‘I’m not telling you that!’

  [Rainy season 1903?]

  FROM Utsarga (1903-4, 1914)

  No. 7

  Like a musk-deer

  maddened by my own scent,

  a maniac, I roam

  from forest to forest.

  The south wind blows

  upon a night of Phalgun.

  I quite lose

  my power of orientation.

  What I want

  I want by mistake.

  What I get

  I do not want at all.

  My desire – it flies out

  from my breast.

  Like a mirage

  it shifts from place to place.

  I want to hug

  and press it against my chest,

  but never again

  does it return to my breast.

  What I want

  I want by mistake.

  What I get

  I do not want at all.

  My flute – it wants

  to hang on to its own song,

  like one deranged, gone

  totally off the rails.

  But what is caught

  and bound so fast, so fast –

  from it, alas,

  all melody evaporates.

  What I want

  I want by mistake.

  What I get

  I do not want at all.

  FROM Kheya (1906)

  The Auspicious Moment

  O Mother, listen: the king’s darling son

  will ride past my room this very day!

  How can I cope with housework

  this morning?

  Tell me, please, how I should dress myself,

  in which style my hair should be braided,

  how my body should be draped

  and in which tint.

  Ah, Mother, why do you look at me like that

  with such surprise?

  I know too well he’ll never cast a glance

  at the spot by my window where I’ll stand and bide.

  It will all be over in the twinkling of an eye

  and to a distant city away he’ll ride.

  Only from some field a minstrel-flute

  may play a wistful melody for a while.

  Yet, knowing that the king’s darling son

  will ride past my room this very day,

  what can I do but get myself dressed up

  just for that moment?

  [Bolpur, 29 July 1905]

  The Renunciation

  O Mother, listen: the king’s darling son

  just rode past my room!

  How the golden crest of his chariot gleamed

  in the morning sun!

  At my window I removed my veil

  and just for a moment stole a glance at him.

  I tore my chain of jewels, flung it on the dust

  right before his path.

  Ah, Mother, why do you look at me like that

  with such surprise?

  Of course, he didn’t pick up the chain-torn jewels:

  his wheels ground them to dust.

  His wheel-track is all you can see now

  before our house.

  No one knows what I gave to whom:

  it’s covered by dust.

  Yet, seeing that the king’s darling son

  was riding past my room,

  what could I do but fling the jewels of my breast

  before his path?

  [Bolpur, 29 July 1905]

  FROM Gitanjali (1910)

  No. 106

  Gently in this hallowed place

  wake up, o my mind –

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  Here I stand and stretch my arms,

  saluting God-in-Man;

  in grand rhythm, with great delight

  I praise Him as best I can.

  This mountain-range so steeped in meditation,

  these plains clutching their rosaries of rivers:

  here for ever the sacred Earth

  we may find,

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  No one knows who called them to this place –

  such streams of humanity!

  Whence did they issue, in impetuous cascades,

  to lose themselves in the sea?

  Here Aryans and non-Aryans,

  Chinese and Dravidians,

  Scythians, Huns, Pathans, Mughals

  dissolved in one body.

  Now that the West has opened its door

  we’re bringing ourselves gifts from that store.

  We shall give and receive, mingle and harmonise:

  there’s no turning back

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  Those warrior-hordes who sang of conquest

  with a demented din,

  through desert trails and mountain passes

  all those who poured in:

  they are all within me still,

  none are far from me!

  In my blood their music hums

  in all its diversity.

  Resound, resound, awesome vina,

  so those who still despise and shun us

  may burst the barriers and gather around us.

  Yes, they’ll congregate

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  Here once without cease

  the great
sound of Om

  had vibrated in heart-strings

  asking us to be one.

  With ascesis it strove to cast

  the Many in the fire of the One,

  to forget divisions and set in motion

  one gigantic heart.

  The entrance to that sacred space

  where such a sacrament took place

  is now open, so with good grace

  we must humbly congregate:

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  Look! That sacrificial fire

  is streaked today with suffering’s red glare.

  Within our spirits this burning we must bear –

  it is written in our fate.

  My mind, be strong to endure this affliction

  and listen to unity’s call.

  Your sense of fear, embarrassment, humiliation –

  banish them, conquer them all.

  The intolerable pain will come to an end.

  Behold what a huge new life is about to be born!

  The night glides to daybreak, the mother-bird wakes

  in her colossal nest –

  on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  Come, Aryans, non-Aryans,

  Hindus and Muslims alike.

  Come you too – you, English people.

  Come, come, Christians!

  Come, Brahmins, with chastened minds,

  and hold everyone’s hands.

  Come, outcastes, bidding goodbye

  to your burden of affronts.

  Make haste to Mother’s consecration,

  where the ritual jars are waiting to be filled

  with water blessed by the touch

  of all and sundry’s hands –

  today on this seashore of India’s grand

  concourse of humankind.

  [Bolpur-Santiniketan, 2 July 1910]

  No. 107

  Where the lowliest live, the poorer than poor,

  it’s there that your footsteps ring:

  behind all, below all,

  amongst those who’ve lost everything.

  When I make an obeisance to you,

  somewhere my gesture comes to an abrupt end.

  To those lowest depths of hurt and insult, where your feet descend,

  my gesture of homage, alas, cannot bend:

  behind all, below all,

  amongst those who’ve lost everything.

  Pride can never reach you where you wander

  in humble clothes, bereft of adornments:

  behind all, below all,

  amongst those who’ve lost everything.

  Where wealth is heaped, where honour is piled up,

  it’s there that I expect your company,

  but where you dwell as a friend of friendless men,

  to that low abode my heart, alas, cannot bend:

  behind all, below all,

  amongst those who’ve lost everything.

  [Bolpur-Santiniketan, 3 July 1910]

  No. 108

  My ill-fated country, those you have affronted –

  with them you must be equalised by sharing the same affront.

  Those you have denied

  human rights,

  allowed to stand before you but never invited in –

  with all of them you must be equalised by sharing the same affront.

  Day after day you have avoided the human touch,

  showing your contempt for the deity that dwells in man.

  One day the Creator’s ruthless fury

  will make you sit by famine’s doorway

  and share with others what there is to eat and drink.

  With all of them you’ll have to be equalised by sharing the same affront.

  There, where you have pushed them away from sharing your seat,

  even there you have banished your own powers, carelessly.

  Crushed by feet,

  those powers now crumble to dust.

  You must come down to that level, or else you can’t be redeemed.

  Today you have to be equalised with others by sharing the same affront.

  Whoever you fling to a lower level will bind you to that level.

  Whoever you keep behind your back is only dragging you backwards.

  Whoever you keep occluded,

  hidden in ignorance-darkness,

  is shaping a chasm between you and your own welfare.

  You must be equalised with all of them by sharing the same affront.

  A hundred centuries have rained indignities on your head,

  yet you still refuse to acknowledge the innate divinity of man.

  But can you not see

  when you lower your eyes

  that the God of the downtrodden, the outcaste, is there in the dust with them?

  You must be equalised there with all the others by sharing the same affront.

  You cannot see Death’s messenger at your door:

  he has already inscribed a curse on your caste-pride.

  If you don’t send out a call to all

  and still insist on staying apart,

  wrapping yourself on all sides with your conceit,

  then surely in death, in the pyre’s ashes, you will be equalised with all.

  [Bolpur-Santiniketan, 4 July 1910]

  FROM Balaka (1916)

  No. 6

  Are you just a picture upon a piece of paper?

  Those distant nebulae

  who jostle in the sky’s nest,

  those who, day and night,

  light in hand, are in transit through the dark,

  planets and stars –

  are you not as real as they are?

  Alas, picture, are you just a picture?

  In the midst of the ever-restless why are you calm?

  O you without a path,

  find a travelling companion!

  Must you, night and day,

  be amongst all and still be so far away,

  for ever fastened to fixity’s inner niche?

  Why, this dust that lifts

  the grey end of its cloth

  and wind-blown, runs amuck,

  in Baishakh strips the widowed earth of jewels,

  decks the anchoress in saffron attire,

  in spring’s coupling-dawns

  covers her limbs with the tracery of patterns:

  even this dust is real, alas,

  like this grass,

  almost hidden under the feet of the universe.

  Because they are mutable, they are real.

  You are immutable, you are a picture.

  You are just a picture.

  One day you walked this road by our side.

  Your breast stirred with your breathing.

  In your limbs

  your life created its very own rhythms

  in songs and dances

  keeping time with the cosmos.

  Ah, that was so long ago, that was!

  In my life

  and my world

  how real you were once!

  In every direction,

  wherever my eyes glanced,

  it was you who inscribed

  the graphics of art’s delight with beauty’s brush.

  In that morning it was you who was

  the word of the cosmos made flesh.

  As we travelled together,

  behind the screen of one night

  you came to a stop.

  I’ve kept going

  with so much pleasure and pain

  for days and nights.

  Flood-tide and ebb-tide

  in light and dark, sea and sky;

  on either side of the road the flowers march past,

  quietly, with all their dyes.

  Life’s wild river rushes in a thousand streams,

  ringing death’s bells.

  The unknown calls me;

  I walk further, further,

  drugged by
my passion for the road.

  But where you stood

  when you got off the road –

  there you are stuck.

  This grass, this dust, those stars, that sun, that moon –

  screened by them all,

  you are a picture, you are just a picture.

  What a poetic delirium this is!

  You – a picture?

  No, no, you are not just a picture.

  Who says you are bound by still lines

  and mute cries?

  Nonsense! That joy could have ceased only if

  this river had lost its flow

  or this cloud

  had wiped this golden writing off itself.

  If the shadow

  of your fine hair had vanished for ever,

  then one day

  the murmuring shade

  of wind-blown madhabis too

  would have been a dream.

  Had I forgotten you?

  It is because

  you lodge in my life’s roots

  that the error arises.

  With absent minds we walk,

  forgetting the flowers.

  Don’t we forget the stars?

  And yet

  they sweeten the air we breathe,

  fill with tunes

  the emptiness that dwells within our errors.

  Being unmindful – I don’t call it oblivion:

  you’ve swayed my blood from your seat in my amnesia’s core.

  Before my eyes you are not;

  right within my eyes are you installed.

  That is why

  you are the green of my greens, the blue of my blues.

  My whole world

  has found its inner harmony in you.

  No one knows, not even I,

  that your melodies reverberate in my songs.

  You are the poet within the poet’s heart.

  You are not a picture. No, not just a picture.

  Early one morning I found you,

  then lost you at night.

  And in the darkness you return, unawares to me.

  You are not a picture. No, you are not a picture.

  [Allahabad, 20 October 1914]

 

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