Gratifying all my thorns,
The flower shall bloom,
And all my suffering
Shall redden into a rose.
In my life-long craving for the sky
Zephyr shall rush to blow,
Maddening my heart it will
Plunder all fragrant treasures.
I shall feel no more amiss
Once I have treasures to share,
Once my intimate worship blossoms
In beauteous forms.
When by the end of night
My Beloved shall caress them,
All the petals unto the last
Will bedeck His feet.
[ Gitimalya, "Garland of Songs" No.49, 1913]
55. EXPECTATION
You remain ever present
Beyond my songs,
My melodies reach Your feet
Though I cannot attain You.
The wind bids imploring :
"Do not keep mooring the raft !"
Steering across, come up
To the centre of my heart.
The game of my songs with You
Is a game with the remoteness,
The aching notes of the flute
Throughout all day.
Seizing my flute, when shall You
Come over and blow into it,
In the dense obscurity
Of a joyous and mute night ?
[ Gitimalya, "Garland of Songs" No.70, 1913]
56. THIS FLAME OF MELODY
This flame of melody that You have set inside my heart,
That flame has pervaded all through-and-through.
Dances that flame while keeping the beats
From branch to branch upon worn out trees :
Whom does it invoke in the sky
With the elated hands ?
The stars stare dumb-founded in the dark,
Maddened a wind rises from nowhere
Immaculate, at the dead of the night,
Blossoms this golden lotus :
None can fathom the spell of that flame.
[ Gitimalya, "Garland of Songs" No.89, 1913]
57. REGRETS
Why did I not strew the dry dust with my tears ?
Who could guess that You would appear like an uninvited ?
You have waded through the desert sand
Without any shadowy tree,
I imposed on You this dire wayfaring,
Curse on me!
Whereas I had been whiling away my idle days
In the shade of my home,
I ignored all that you suffered
At every step.
That suffering, however, inside my being
Had resounded with a secret smart,
Stigmatising my heart with a profound wound.
[ Gitimalya, "Garland of Songs" No.91, 1913]
58. GRATIFICATION
The moment when tears flooded mine eyes in a monsoon of sorrow,
Before the threshold of my heart stopped the chariot of my friend.
By handing over to Him the chalice of union that was brimming
With separation and pain, I have no more regrets, regrets none.
Gathering secretly in my mind, a hope, neglected for years...
That thirst for a touch was quenched in a twinkling of eye.
I knew at last for whom I shed all my tears :
Blessed be this awakening, blessed these tears, blessed all.
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.1, 1914]
59. THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
O touch my heart with the flame of a philosopher's stone,
Sanctify this life by consuming with Your fire.
O lift up this body of mine to transform it
Into a lamp of Your tabernacle,
Set all songs flaming night and day.
O touch my heart with the flame of a philosopher's stone.
Let Your caress in the dark from limb to limb
Set blossoming stars throughout the night.
All shadow shall vanish from the glimpses and mine eyes
Will contemplate but light wherever they turn.
Upwards, all my suffering will blaze.
O touch my heart with the flame of a philosopher's stone.
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.18, 1914]
60. THE HERO
Holding the sword on one hand
And the necklace on the other,
He has forced your door :
He has not come to beg alms,
He has come to fight
And win over your heart.
Out of the path of Death
He emerges into Life,
Attired like a hero :
He will not return with a partial booty,
He will take possession at a time
Of whatever he finds.
He has forced your door.
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.20, 1914]
61. LONGING
You remained asleep, O my mind,
When the man of my mind was at the door.
You woke up on hearing
The sound of His leaving,
You woke up in the dark.
My garment outspread on the floor
I spend my solitary night,
In the dark I listen to His flute,
Without any glimpse of Him.
Can ever the eyes see Him -
The One whom you left in the lurch -
Can you catch Him up,
The One whom you have driven away ?
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.27, 1914]
62. FORGIVE, O LORD
Forgive, O Lord, my weariness
And if I lag behind on the path.
This quiver in the heart,
This shivering, all this pain,
Forgive, forgive O Lord.
Forgive, O Lord, my miserableness
And if I keep on looking backward.
Garlands wither on the trough
In heat of a scorching sun,
Forgive that pallor, O Lord.
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.59, 1914]
63. VICTORY
The doors have been flung open, You have appeared, O Resplendent,
Victory to You.
Scatter all darkness with Your generous emergence,
Victory to You.
O Hero, O Conqueror, in the dawn of a new life
You hold the spear of a novel hope,
Mercilessly cut asunder all worn out obsession...
Let the bonds fall off.
Victory to You.
Welcome, O Intolerable, come O Merciless,
Victory to You.
Welcome, O Immaculate, come O Dauntless,
Victory to You.
O morning Sun, you have risen like a warrior,
Your horn resounds on the painful path,
Kindle the flame of dawn in our mind,
Abolish Death.
Victory to You.
[ Gitali, "Songs", No.101, 1914]
64. SHAH-JEHAN
You knew pretty well, Ruler of India, O Shah-Jehan,
That surges of Time takes away all life and youth and riches and honours.
The unique wish of the Emperor was
To perpetuate only your innermost sorrow.
Adamant, even the monarch's power
Wilt while dozing like the reddening of a twilight,
Solely a prolonged sigh
Might sadden the sky by heaving constantly,
That is all you hoped.
Let vanish, vanish if it must,
The splendour of diamonds and pearls and jewels -
Even as a wizard's rainbow glow on the horizon's void -
Let there be
Merely a drop of tears,
On the cheek of Time, dazzling and white,
This Tajmahal.
Alas, O human heart !
There is no time
No time at all
To keep on looking backward
At anyone whosoever.
You drift on
Amidst the strong currents of life
From bank to bank of this world...
Embarking on one market
You disembark on another one.
The moment the sacred rustling of the west wind
Inside your bower
Fills with mellifluous blossoms2
The agitated scarf of the trellis,
The dusk of farewell approaches,
Strewing the dust with bruised petals.
There is no time !
Therefore by dewy nights
You bedeck the espalier with kunda3 freshly blooming
As ornaments on autumn's joyous tearful wreath.
2 madhavi, a particularly sweet-scented variety of jasmine, recalling Madhava, one of Krishna's names.
3 all-white fragrant flowers
Alas, O heart,
Whatever you gain
Has to be abandoned on the wayside
At the day's end, at the night's end.
There is no time, no time at all.
Therefore, Emperor, your anxious heart
Sought to entice the heart of Time
With Beauty's seduction.
Adorning His neck with a garland
Greeting formless Death
Clad in a wondrous deathless attire.
Throughout the twelve months
There is no scope
Of lamenting,
Thus under a shroud of eternal silence
You firmly buried
Your whimper without solace.
By moonlit nights within the secret chapel
The name with which you softly called
Your beloved,
You left that cooing on this spot,
For the ear of Infinity.
The sad tenderness of love
Knew how to blossom
In abundant flowers of Beauty in this serene stone.
Emperor, O Poet,
This is the picture of your heart,
A new Meghaduta 4 of yours,
Unprecedented, marvelous
In its rhythm and melody
It soars ever towards the Unseen
Where your beloved, solitude-stricken,
Waits mingled
In the glow of the rising sun,
In the sighing melancholy at the horizon of a weary eve
The bodiless and voluptuous grace of chameli 5 by a full-moon night, On a shore beyond the pale of words
Where the begging eyes roam on from door to door.
The emissaries of your Beauty from age to age
Shunning the sentinels of Time
Pass by with this speechless message :
"I have not forgotten, I have not forgotten, I have not forgotten, O my Love !"
You are gone today,
O great King,
Your empire has fainted like a dream,
Your throne has been shattered;
Carried by the wind
The memory of your regiments -
Trembled the earth under whose strides -
Is now blowing along the dust of Delhi's streets.
The prisoners sing no more;
No music from your pavilion seeks to be tuned
4 Famous "Cloud Messenger" by Kalidasa.
5 another variety of jasmine
With the murmur of the Yamuna;
Dying with the crickets' chirping
In a remote corner of the broken palace
The ankle-bells of your courtesans
Set the night-sky to weep.
Yet, immaculate, your messenger -
Tireless, relentless,
Indifferent to the rise and fall of kingdoms,
Indifferent to the ups and downs of life and death,
From age to age -
Proclaim in one voice
The message of the solitary longing :
"I have not forgotten, I have not forgotten, I have not forgotten, O my Love !"
A sheer lie : can anyone assure
That you have not forgotten, you have not opened ajar
The trap door of memory's cage ?
That the obscurity of the past setting sun
Has still been binding your heart ?
Has it not yet flown away
By the loop-hole of oblivion ?
A mausoleum
Remains immobile forever,
Clinging to the mortal dust
Carefully it conceals Death
Beneath the shroud of memory.
Who can hold back life ?
Every star in the sky is crying up to it,
Its invitation comes from sphere to sphere
From ever new eastern horizons with an ever new light.
Breaking open memory's knot,
It shoots forth unhampered
Along the cosmic path.
O great King, no great kingdom could
Hold you back,
O Vast, even the ocean-breasted earth
Could not fill you up.
Therefore, once the feast of life is over,
With joint-feet you kick off the earth
Like a clay-pot.
You are nobler than your deeds,
Hence the chariot of your life,
Again and again,
Leaves your deeds behind.
Hence
Your traces are manifest, you are not here.
Love that knows not
To drive or to rush forward,
Love that installed its throne in the middle of the road,
Its discourse on pleasure
Clings to your feet like the dust on the path,
Which you have returned to dust.
Upon that dust of your feet behind you
All on a sudden
With a gust of wind from your mind
Had sown here a seed fallen astray from the garland of life.
You are gone far away :
That seed with its immortal sprout
Seeks to reach heaven,
It sings in a profound voice :
"As far as I can gaze,
He is not there, not there, that wayfarer.
His beloved could not hold him back,
the kingdom yielded,
Oceans and mountains failed to stop him.
His chariot today
Moves on, urged by the night,
Accompanied by songs of constellations
Towards the triumphal archway of Dawn.
Hence
I lie here under the weight of memory;
Emancipated, he is no more here."
[ Balaka, "Flight of Swans", No.7, 1914]
65. PIONEERS
Could you not be patient a little more ?
Winter is not yet over.
What flair very close to the trail
Drives you to sing in choir?
Oh distraught Champakas and intoxicated Bakuls,
Whom do you rush to welcome, all maddened in glee ?
Trackers of death, you are the first flock,
You didn't heed for the Moment to come,
From branch to branch your rumours ring
Enlivening and perfuming the undergrowths.
Jostling and laughing aloud before all others,
You blossomed in bounty, you fell in heaps.
The spring that was expected in April,
That would come afloat on the zephyr's high tide,
You no more waited for its hour,
You set piping your flute before term.
How could you reach the goal before the night-fall ?
You scattered all your treasures with your laughter and tears.
Forgetful of calculations, O my crazy souls,
On listening to His footfalls from far,
To cover the dust and bedeck His path
You laid down your own death.
Before you could see or hear Him, your chalices set you free,
You could no more wait for contemplating His face.
[ Balaka, "Flight of Swans, No.21, 1916]
66. A FLIGHT OF SWANS
Glistening under the twilight rays
The bend of the Jhelum gets dim
In the dark, looking like a dagger in its sheath;
Following the ebb tide of the day
The nocturnal high tide appears
With star-flowers floating on its sombre waters.
Below the obscure mountain plateau
A range of deodar 6 trees :
As though the entire Creation has grown eloquent in its dream,
Unable to articulate,
It whimpers in the dark, emitting masses of ineffable sounds.
And then, all of a sudden I hear,
Across the evening sky
A lightning of words in the field of the void
Leap up at once from a distance towards somewhere ever far away.
O flight of swans,
In piles of a boisterous laughter of joy, your wings -
Drunk with the wine of tempest -
Fly on in the firmament rippling with a rousing wonder.
The vibration of those wings -
A celestial dancing maid7-become-sound -
Passes by breaking the meditation of tranquility.
Start up the mountain-chains wrapped up in the dark,
Start up the deodar woods.
6 "trees of the Gods" < deva ('god')+ daru ('tree') : upright conifer trees 7 apsara
It seems the message of these wings
In the innermost core of a delighted immobility
Brings forth for a split second
The motion of velocity.
The mountains long to get transformed into clouds of May;
The ranges of trees aspire by unfolding their wings
And transcending the clutch of the earth
Lose all notion of direction
by pursuing the trail of that sound,
To discover the brim of the sky.
Rending this evening's dreams come surging
billows of nostalgia
For the distant,
O wings of detachment !
In the heart of the universe resounds a cry of distress :
"Not here, not here, somewhere else !"
O flight of swans !
Before me, you have undone the lid of silence tonight.
Beneath this muteness I hear
In the void, in water and on land
A similar fluttering of impetuous and agitated wings.
Vegetations
Are bustling wings below their earthen sky,
Below the earthen obscurity, indifferent to destination,
Unfurl wings of sprouts,
A flight of thousands of seeds.
Today I witness
This chain of mountains,
This forest, rush all... wings deployed...
From island to island, from unknown to farther unknown.
The rustling of the wings of constellations
Takes aback darkness with the weeping of night.
I perceive messages of men by flocks
Keep on flying on unseen paths
Right from a dim past
up to half emerging and distant epoch's end.
I hear within my being
In the company of myriad birds,
Day in, day out,
This nestless bird speeds across light and obscurity
From one shore to another shore.
The Void is vibrant with this song of the cosmic wings :
"Not here, elsewhere, elsewhere, somewhere else !"
[ Balaka, "Flight of Swans", No.36, 1914]
67. FLOWER FROM ANOTHER LAND
O Flower from another land, when I asked :
"What is your name ?"
Nodding, you smiled and I then understood
The name does not matter.
Nothing else matters, except
The smile that is your identity.
O Flower of another land, holding you close to my heart
I prayed : "Do let me know
where you live,"
Nodding, you smiled, replying : "I don't know it, I don't know."
Then I understood that it matters little
to know the land where you live.
Your home is the heart
Of whosoever lovingly understands you,
Nowhere else.
O Flower of another land, I whispered again in your ears :
"What language do you speak ?"
Nodding only you smiled
While rustled leaves all around.
I told myself : "I know it well,
The message of fragrance
In silence conveys your hope.
The language of your breath has filled my breath up to the brim."
O Flower of another land, when I first came, it was dawn,
"Do you know me ?", I asked you :
Smiling, you nodded and I thought
nobody regrets it a jot.
I urged : "Can't you understand that in your contact
My heart is filled with passion.
There are others who know me a shade better,
O Flower from another land."
O Flower of another land, when I enquired, "Let me know :
Will you forget me ?"
Smiling you nod; I know, well I know
You will remember me from time to time.
A couple of days later
Once I shall leave for another land,
Drawn by the distance,
in your dreams I shall look familiar...
You will not forget me.8
[ Puravi ("From the East"), 1924]
8 Written in Buenos Aires, on 12 November, 1924, where Tagore was to spend a couple of months as the guest of Victoria Ocampo, whom he was to call Vijaya ; he was to dedicate to her the collection of his poems, Puravi ("From the East", name of an evening raga known for its melancholy).
68. DAUNTLESS
We two together shall not build upon earth
A heavenly toy,
With admiring and delicate songs all sloppy in tears.
With honeyed suffering from the Five Arrows9,
O my Love, we shall not compose our nuptial bed;
Let us not - feeble in heart -
Beg favours from Fate.
Fearless, we know it for certain :
You are, and I am.
We shall hold high the banner of Love
Across the difficult path
In a dizzy speed, on most audacious missions.
What if the harsh days make us suffer ?
We want no truce, we shall want no consolation.
If our oars break at all while crossing the river ,
If the cords of our sails are torn,
Standing face to face with Death, we shall know :
You are, and I am.
With both our eyes we have seen the world,
We have seen one another;
We both have endured the scorching desert path,
We have run after no seductive mir