Selected Poems (Tagore, Rabindranath)

by Rabindranath Tagore

  Come, come; in the drought there’ll be nothing of these

  But the dance of their withered wraiths in the barren night, so come, bees.

  I hear the song of the closing year like a flute in the rustling leaves,

  10

  So smear your wings with pollen’s chronicle before its fragrance flees.

  Take all you can from flowers that summer heat will strew;

  Cram the old year’s honey into the hives of the new.

  Come, come; do not delay, new year bees –

  Look what a wealth of parting gifts has been laid on the year as she leaves.

  15

  The fierce, destructive heat of Baiśākh will quickly seize

  The dolan-capā buds that tremble now in the Caitra breeze.

  Finish all that they have to give, let nothing stay;

  As the season ends let everything go in an orgy of giving away.

  Come, thieves of hidden honey; come now, bees -

  20

  The year has chosen to marry death and wants to give all as she leaves.

  Sea-maiden

  Wet with sea-water, with loose dripping hair

  You sat on the rock shore.

  Your flowing yellow skirt

  Rolled and curved round your feet.

  5

  The tender dawn

  Wrote in glistening gold on your naked breasts and unadorned skin.

  With a makara-crested crown on my brow,

  Holding in my right hand bow and arrow

  I stood majestically

  10

  And said, ‘I have come from a far country.’

  Starting from your stone seat in alarm,

  You cried, ‘Why have you come?’

  I said, ‘Do not be afraid:

  I have come to pick pūjā-offerings in your flowering wood.’

  15

  You came with me, smiling your favour;

  We picked jasmine and jātī and cāpā-flower.

  We dressed a basket with flowers; we sat together

  And jointly worshipped dancing Śiva.

  Dawn-mist vanished; the light that flooded the sky

  20

  Showed Pārvatī smiling as she caught her husband’s eye.

  When over the mountains appeared the evening star,

  You sat alone indoors.

  Blue silk girdled your waist; on your head, a mālatī-chaplet;

  Round each of your wrists a bracelet.

  25 I played my flute as I drew near;

  ‘I come as your guest,’ I said at your door.

  You lit your lamp in dread and alarm,

  Stared at me, said, ‘Why have you come?’

  I said, ‘Do not fear me:

  30

  I have come to dress you in my finery.’

  You smiled; I placed

  A necklace of golden crescents across your breast.

  I circled your bound-up hair with my own

  Makara-crown.

  35

  Your companions lit lamps and marvelled;

  The jewels on your body sparkled.

  You sweetened and disturbed the spring night;

  Your anklets jingled as you danced to my beat.

  The full moon smiled; śiva and Pārvatī,

  40

  Light and shade, played in the waters of the sea.

  I did not notice the ending of the day;

  I found myself floating again in my boat on a twilit sea.

  Suddenly the wind was against me:

  Waves reared, a storm blew up fiercely.

  45

  Salt-water filled my boat,

  And it sank with its cargo of jewels in the dark night.

  Again but broken in fortune I came to wait at your door,

  In stained rags, no splendour.

  Opening the door of the Śiva temple I saw

  50

  That our basket of flowers still lay there.

  I saw, lit by the restless festivity

  Of the surging mêlée

  Of moonlight dancing in the sea,

  My patterns still painted on your meek lowered brow,

  55

  My necklace still on your breast.

  Unobserved I saw, expressed

  In your gestures and form,

  The pitch and beats of my drum;

  In your limbs the swing

  60

  Of my tālas delighting, singing, oscillating.

  Hear my prayer, beautiful maiden;

  Come before me with your lamp again.

  This time I am no longer makara-crowned;

  I no longer have bow and arrow in my hand;

  65

  Neither have I brought a basket for the gathering of flowers

  In your wood by the sea where the south wind blows.

  My vīnā is all I have with me.

  Look at me, see whether you recognize me.

  Question

  God, again and again through the ages you have sent messengers

  To this pitiless world:

  They have said, ‘Forgive everyone’, they have said, ‘Love one another –

  Rid your hearts of evil.’

  5

  They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days

  We turn them away with hollow greetings, from outside the doors of our houses.

  And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless

  Under cover of night;

  And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,

  10

  No hope of redress.

  I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,

  In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail.

  My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute:

  Black moonless night

  15

  Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this is why,

  With tears in my eyes, I ask:

  Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your light,

  Can it be that you have forgiven them? Can it be that you love them?

  Flute-music

  Kinu the milkman’s alley.

  A ground-floor room in a two-storeyed house,

  Slap on the road, windows barred.

  Decaying walls, crumbling to dust in places

  5

  Or stained with damp.

  Stuck on the door,

  A picture of Gaeśa, Bringer of Success,

  From the end of a bale of cloth.

  Another creature apart from me lives in my room

  10

  For the same rent:

  A lizard.

  There’s one difference between him and me:

  He doesn’t go hungry.

  I get twenty-five rupees a month

  15

  As junior clerk in a trading office.

  I’m fed at the Dattas’ house

  For coaching their boy.

  At dusk I go to Sealdah station,

  Spend the evening there

  20

  To save the cost of light.

  Engines chuffing,

  Whistles shrieking,

  Passengers scurrying,

  Coolies shouting.

  25

  I stay till half past ten,

  Then back to my dark, silent, lonely room.

  A village on the Dhaleśvarī river, that’s where my aunt’s people live.

  Her brother-in-law’s daughter –

  She was due to marry my unfortunate self, everything was fixed.

  30

  The moment was indeed auspicious for her, no doubt of that –

  For I ran away.

  The girl was saved from me,

  And I from her.

  She did not come to this room, but she’s in and out of my mind all the time:

  35

  Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.

  Pouring rain.

  My tram costs go up,
r />   But often as not my pay gets cut for lateness.

  Along the alley

  40

  Mango skins and stones, jack-fruit pulp,

  Fish-gills, dead kittens

  And God knows what other rubbish

  Pile up and rot.

  My umbrella is like my depleted pay –

  45

  Full of holes.

  My sopping office clothes ooze

  Like a pious Vaiava.

  Monsoon darkness

  Sticks in my damp room

  50

  Like an animal caught in a trap,

  Lifeless and numb.

  Day and night I feel strapped bodily

  On to a half-dead world.

  At the corner of the alley lives Kāntabābu –

  55

  Long hair carefully parted,

  Large eyes,

  Cultivated tastes.

  He fancies himself on the cornet:

  The sound of it comes in gusts

  60

  On the foul breeze of the alley –

  Sometimes in the middle of the night,

  Sometimes in the early morning twilight,

  Sometimes in the afternoon

  When sun and shadows glitter.

  65

  Suddenly this evening

  He starts to play runs in Sindhu-Bārōyā rāg,

  And the whole sky rings

  With eternal pangs of separation.

  At once the alley is a lie

  70

  False and vile as the ravings of a drunkard,

  And I feel that nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk

  From the Emperor Akbar.

  Torn umbrella and royal parasol merge,

  Rise on the sad music of a flute

  75

  Towards one heaven.

  The music is true

  Where, in the everlasting twilight-hour of my wedding,

  The Dhalesvarī river flows,

  Its banks deeply shaded by tamāl-trees,

  80

  And she who waits in the courtyard

  Is dressed in a Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.

  Unyielding

  When I called you in your garden

  Mango blooms were rich in fragrance –

  Why did you remain so distant,

  Keep your door so tightly fastened?

  5

  Blossoms grew to ripe fruit-clusters –

  You rejected my cupped handfuls,

  Closed your eyes to perfectness.

  In the fierce harsh storms of Baiśākh

  Golden ripened fruit fell tumbling –

  10

  ‘Dust,’ I said, ‘defiles such offerings:

  Let your hands be heaven to them.’

  Still you showed no friendliness.

  Lampless were your doors at evening,

  Pitch-black as I played my vīnā.

  15

  How the starlight twanged my heartstrings!

  How I set my vīnā dancing!

  You showed no responsiveness.

  Sad birds twittered sleeplessly,

  Calling, calling lost companions.

  20

  Gone the right time for our union –

  Low the moon while still you brooded,

  Sunk in lonely pensiveness.

  Who can understand another!

  Heart cannot restrain its passion.

  25

  I had hoped that some remaining

  Tear-soaked memories would sway you,

  Stir your feet to lightsomeness.

  Moon fell at the feet of morning,

  Loosened from night’s fading necklace.

  30

  While you slept, O did my vīnā

  Lull you with its heartache? Did you

  Dream at least of happiness?

  Earth

  Accept my homage, Earth, as I make my last obeisance of the day,

  Bowed at the altar of the setting sun.

  You are mighty, and knowable only by the mighty;

  You counterpoise charm and severity;

  5

  Compounded of male and female

  You sway human life with unbearable conflict.

  The cup that your right hand fills with nectar

  Is smashed by your left;

  Your playground rings with your mocking laughter.

  10

  You make heroism hard to attain;

  You make excellence costly;

  You are not merciful to those who deserve mercy.

  Ceaseless warfare is hidden in your plants:

  Their crops and fruits are victory-wreaths won from struggle.

  15

  Land and sea are your cruel battlefields -

  Life proclaims its triumph in the face of death.

  Civilization rests its foundation upon your cruelty:

  Ruin is the penalty exacted for any shortcoming.

  In the first chapter of your history Demons were supreme –

  20

  Harsh, barbaric, brutish;

  Their clumsy thick fingers lacked art;

  With clubs and mallets in hand they rioted over sea and mountain.

  Their fire and smoke churned sky into nightmare;

  They controlled the inanimate world;

  25

  They had blind hatred of Life.

  Gods came next; by their spells they subdued the Demons –

  The insolence of Matter was crushed.

  Mother Earth spread out her green mantle;

  On the eastern peaks stood Dawn;

  30

  On the western sea-shore Evening descended,

  Dispensing peace from her chalice.

  The shackled Demons were humbled;

  But primal barbarity has kept its grip on your history.

  It can suddenly invade order with anarchy –

  35

  From the dark recesses of your being

  It can suddenly emerge like a snake.

  Its madness is in your blood.

  The spells of the Gods resound through sky and air and forest,

  Sung solemnly day and night, high and low;

  40

  But from regions under your surface

  Sometimes half-tame Demons raise their serpent-hoods –

  They goad you into wounding your own creatures,

  Into ruining your own creation.

  At your footstool mounted on evil as well as good

  45

  To your vast and terrifying beauty,

  I offer today my scarred life’s homage.

  I touch your huge buried store of life and death

  Feel it throughout my body and mind.

  The corpses of numberless generations of men lie heaped in your dust:

  50

  I too shall add a few fistfuls, the final measure of my joys and pains:

  Add them to that name-absorbing, shape-absorbing, fame-absorbing