I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems

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I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems Page 16

by Rabindranath Tagore


  No. 36

  Glimmering in evening’s colours, Jhelum’s curved stream

  faded in the dark, like a sheathed

  curved sword.

  The day ebbed. Night, in full flood,

  rushed in, star-flowers afloat in its black waters.

  In the darkened valley

  deodars stood in rows.

  Creation, it seemed, had something to say in its sleep,

  but couldn’t speak clearly:

  clumps of inarticulate sound moaned in the dark.

  Suddenly that instant I heard

  a sound’s lightning-flash in the evening sky:

  it darted across that tract of empty space,

  then receded – further, further – till it died.

  Wild birds,

  how your wings drunk on the wine

  of violent gales raised billows of surprise

  and merriment’s loud laughter in the sky!

  That sumptuous whoosh – it was

  a sonorous nymph of the heavens swishing across,

  disturbing stillness seated in meditation.

  They quivered with excitement –

  the mountains sunk in darkness,

  the deodar-glen.

  What those wings had to say

  seemed to conduct

  just for an instant

  velocity’s passion

  into the very heart of thrilled stillness.

  The mountain wished to be Baishakh’s vagrant cloud.

  The trees – they wanted to untie themselves from the earth,

  to spread wings

  and follow the line of that sound,

  to lose themselves in the quest for the sky’s limit.

  The dream of that evening burst and ripples rose,

  waves of yearning for what was far, far away.

  Vagabond wings!

  How the universe cried with longing –

  ‘Not here, no, not here, somewhere else!’

  Wild birds,

  you’ve lifted the lid of stillness for me tonight.

  Under the dome of silence

  in land, water, air

  I can hear the noise of wings – mad, unquiet.

  The grass

  beat their wings on their own sky – the earth.

  Millions of seed-birds

  spread their sprouting wings

  from unknown depths of subterranean darkness.

  Yes, I can see

  these mountains, these forests

  travelling with outspread pinions

  from island to island, from one unknown to another.

  Darkness is troubled by light’s anguished cries

  as the wings of the very stars vibrate.

  Many are the human speeches I’ve heard migrating

  in flocks, flying on invisible tracks

  from obscure pasts to distant inchoate futures.

  And within myself I’ve heard

  day and night

  in the company of countless birds

  a homeless bird speeding through light and dark

  from one unknown shore to yet another.

  On cosmic wings a refrain echoes through space:

  ‘Not here, no, but somewhere, somewhere else!’

  [Srinagar, between 27 and 31 October 1915, at night]

  No. 39

  The day you rose, world poet, above a far shore,

  England’s horizon found you close to her breast

  and reckoned you were her treasure, hers alone.

  She kissed your radiant forehead and for a while

  held you tight in the clasp of her sylvan boughs,

  hid you for a while behind her stole of mists

  on a playground of fairies, dewy, dense with grass,

  where wild flowers blow. As yet the island’s groves

  hadn’t woken up to hymn the poet-sun.

  Thereafter, slowly, to the infinite’s silent signals

  you left the horizon’s lap, and hour by hour

  climbed, through the centuries, brilliant, to the zenith,

  taking your place in the centre of all directions,

  lighting all minds. Hear how, in another age,

  on the shore of the Indian Ocean the quivering fronds

  of massed coconut-groves ring with your triumph.

  [Shilaidaha, 29 November 1915]

  FROM Palataka (1918)

  Getting Lost

  My little girl,

  having heard the call of her mates,

  stopping and starting nervously in the dark,

  was making her way down the stairs.

  She had a lamp in her hand,

  which she carefully guarded with her sari’s end.

  I was on the roof-terrace

  on that night of Chaitra, full of stars.

  Suddenly hearing my daughter’s cry, I rushed

  to see what the matter was.

  It seemed that as she’d been going down the stairs,

  the wind had blown out her lamp.

  ‘What’s up, Bami?’ – I asked.

  She cried from below, ‘I’m lost!’

  On that night of Chaitra, full of stars,

  back on the roof-terrace, looking up at the sky,

  a girl just like my Bami I thought I saw –

  slowly, without companions, walking by,

  lamp-flame shielded by dark-blue sari’s end.

  Should her light have gone out, making her suddenly stop,

  she would have filled the sky with her cry – ‘I am lost!’

  The Last Establishment

  They always say: ‘Has gone’, ‘Has gone away’.

  Yet let me add this:

  don’t say he or she is not.

  That’s a lie.

  Therefore I cannot endure it.

  It hurts my soul.

  Coming and going

  to men are so clearly partitioned

  that their language

  bears but half a hope.

  But I would unite myself to that ocean

  where is and is-not, in their fullness, are equipoised.

  FROM Lipika (1922)

  The Old House

  1

  A family rich for generations has become poor; it’s to them that the house over there belongs.

  Each day the bad times dent it a bit more.

  Walls crumble into sand; sparrows dig into broken floors

  with their claws, flapping their wings in the dust; in Chandi’s

  chapel pigeons congregate like flocks of torn rain-clouds.

  No one has bothered to find out when a door-leaf on the north

  side broke off. The other leaf – left on its own like a grieving

  widow – bangs again and again in the wind; nobody looks at it.

  A house in three parts. Only five rooms are inhabited, the

  rest being locked up. Like an old man of eighty-five, most of

  whose life is occupied by memories in ancient padlocks, – with

  only one area available for the movement of modern times.

  Dribbling sand and baring its bricks, the house stands on the

  edge of the street like an apathetic tramp dressed in a patched

  kantha, as unmindful of himself as of others.

  2

  In the early hours of one morning a wailing of women rose from

  the direction of the house. The last son of the family, who used

  to scrape a living by playing Radhika in amateur open-air theatricals,

  had just died at the age of eighteen.

  The women wailed for a few days, then one heard no more

  about them.

  After that all the doors in the house were padlocked.

  Only that one widowed door on the north side, which neither

  broke off nor could stay shut, kept slamming in the wind crash

  crash like the beating of an agonised heart.

  3

  One afternoon one heard the noise of children in that h
ouse.

  A red-bordered sari was hanging from the balcony.

  After so many days a portion of the house has been let.

  The tenant has modest wages and numerous children. The

  exhausted mother gets fed up and spanks them, and they roll

  on the floor and howl.

  A middle-aged maid toils all day and has rows with the mistress; she says ‘I’m leaving!’ but never does.

  4

  This part of the house is seeing a little bit of maintenance every day.

  Cracked panes have been papered over; gaps in the balcony

  railing have had bamboo slats over them; a broken bedroom

  window is propped up by a brick; the walls have had a coat of

  whitewash, though the black patches haven’t altogether disappeared.

  On the cornice of the roof-top terrace the sudden apparition of

  an impoverished pot-plant of variegated leaves feels ashamed of

  itself before the sky. Right next to it the foundation-cracking

  peepul tree stands erect, its leaves appearing to laugh cheekily

  at the other leaves.

  A great decline of a great prosperity. Trying to conceal it with

  the little tricks of little hands has only laid it bare.

  No one, though, has ever bothered to look at the empty room

  on the north side. Its mateless door still keeps thrashing in the

  wind – like a wretch beating his breast.

  [1919?]

  One Day

  I remember that afternoon. From time to time the rain would

  slacken, then a gust of wind would madden it again.

  It was dark inside the room, and I couldn’t concentrate on

  work. I took my instrument in my hand and began a monsoon

  song in the mode of Mallar.

  She came out of the next room and came just up to the door.

  Then she went back. Once more she came and stood outside

  the door. After that she slowly came in and sat down. She had

  some sewing in her hand; with her head lowered, she kept

  working at it. Later she stopped sewing and sat looking at the

  blurred trees outside the window.

  The rain slowed, my song came to an end. She got up and

  went to braid her hair.

  Nothing but this. Just that one afternoon twined with rain

  and song and idling and darkness.

  Stories of kings and wars are cheaply scattered in history. But

  a tiny fragment of an afternoon story stays hidden in time’s box

  like a rare jewel. Only two people know of it.

  [1919?]

  Grief’s Ingratitude

  It was at daybreak that she took her leave.

  ‘Everything’s unreal,’ said my mind, attempting an explanation.

  ‘Why?’ – I asked in a cross mood – ‘Aren’t these all real –

  the sewing-box on the table, the flower-pot on the roof-terrace,

  the name-inscribed hand-fan on the bed?’

  My mind replied, ‘But still you have to consider that –’

  ‘Stop it,’ I interrupted. ‘Look at that book of stories with a

  hair-pin stuck half-way through the pages. Clearly, she hadn’t

  finished reading it. Is that unreal as well? If so, why should

  she be even more unreal than that?’

  My mind fell silent. A friend came and said, ‘What’s good is

  real and never perishes. The whole world cherishes it, keeping

  it on its breast like a jewel in a chain.’

  ‘How do you know?’ – I asked angrily – ‘Isn’t the body

  good? Where’s that body gone?’

  As a little boy in an angry mood vents his violence on his

  mother, I began to lash out against whatever was my refuge in

  this universe. ‘This world’s a traitor,’ I said.

  Suddenly something startled me. It seemed to me that someone

  whispered, ‘Ungrateful!’

  Looking out of the window, I saw the moon, the third of the

  waning phase, rising behind a casuarina tree. It was like the

  hide-and-seek of the laughter of her who had gone. A rebuke

  came to me from the star-sprinkled darkness, ‘That I had let

  myself be caught – was that illusory? And why this fanatical

  faith in the screen that’s come between us?’

  [1919?]

  The Question

  1

  The father returned from the crematory.

  The boy of seven – his body bare, a gold amulet round his

  neck – was alone by the window above the lane.

  He was unaware of his own thoughts.

  The morning sun had just touched the tip of the neem tree in

  front of the house opposite. A man selling green mangoes came

  to the lane, called several times, then went away.

  The father came and took his little boy in his arms. The little

  boy asked: ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  The father lifted his head upwards and said: ‘In heaven.’

  2

  That night the father, weary with grief, sobbed intermittently

  in his sleep.

  A lantern glimmered by the door. A pair of lizards kept

  watch on the wall.

  The room faced an open terrace. At some point the little boy

  went outside and stood there.

  All around him the houses with their extinguished lights looked

  like guards at a giant’s palace, sleeping in a standing position.

  The naked child stood staring at the sky.

  His bewildered mind was asking a question of someone: ‘Where’s

  the road to heaven?’

  The sky didn’t answer; only the stars trembled with the dumb

  darkness’s tears.

  [1919?]

  FROM Shishu Bholanath (1922)

  Sunday

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –

  they come so fast, so fast.

  I suppose their fathers must be owners

  of vast motor cars.

  But Sunday, but Sunday –

  why does she delay?

  Slowly, slowly she walks

  after all the other days.

  Her home beyond the skies –

  is it further than the homes of the others?

  Like you, Mum, she must be

  the daughter of a poor family.

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –

  all hell-bent to stay.

  They won’t go home. Amazing

  how they simply won’t go away!

  But Sunday, but Sunday –

  someone treads on her heels.

  Every half-hour they ring the hour!

  What a flurry! She keels!

  In her home beyond the skies

  has she more chores than the others?

  Like you, Mum, she must be

  the daughter of a poor family.

  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and others –

  grim-faced old stewpots!

  They don’t like little boys. With us

  they are always cross!

  But as I get up in the morning

  at the end of Saturday night,

  who should I spy but Sunday,

  her face lit up by a smile!

  How she cries when she says goodbye

  and gazes with yearning at us!

  Like you, Mum, she must be

  the daughter of a poor family.

  [21 September 1921]

  Remembering

  I don’t remember my mother.

  Only this: sometimes when I’m at play,

  suddenly, for no reason at all,

  a tune begins to buzz

  and ring in my ears,

  and my mother comes

  and merges with my play.
r />   Maybe she used to sing,

  rocking me.

  She has gone

  and left her song behind.

  I don’t remember my mother.

  Only this: when in Ashwin

  at dawn among shiuli trees

  the scent of their flowers

  is borne by the dewy breeze,

  somehow then she comes back to my mind –

  my mother.

  Long ago perhaps she gathered shiulis,

  filling her basket.

  So the scent of Puja

  returns as her scent.

  I don’t remember my mother.

  Only this: when I sit by the window

  of my bedroom

  and look at the far blue sky,

  it seems to me my mother’s looking at me

  with steady eyes.

  Long ago she used to hold me on her lap

  and look at my face.

  That’s the look she has left

  in all the sky.

  [25 September 1921]

  FROM Purabi (1925)

  Gratitude

  ‘I won’t forget,’ I had said, when your moist eyes

  had silently gazed at my face. Forgive me if I did forget.

  Ah, that was such a long time ago! On that day’s kiss

  so many madhabi petals of early spring

  fell in layers and withered, so many times

  noon’s dove-cooings pressed weary sleep,

  going and returning. Your black eyes’ gaze

  had written on my spirit that letter of first love,

  so shy, so nervous! On that autograph of your heart

  restless lights and shadows have through the hours

  waved their brush-strokes, so many evenings have splashed

  golden oblivion, so many nights have left

  their own dream-writings in crisscrosses of faint lines,

 

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