A heart attracts a heart, eyes chase eyes -
The story of us two creatures
Is nothing more than this.
In the month of chaitra In the moonlit eve
The fragrance of hena floats in the air –
My flute rolls at my feet
Flowers are heaped in your lap –
This our love
Is very simple and straight.
Your light orange dress
Casts a spell on my eyes
The garland of juthi you made
Hangs on my breast
Like love’s offerings.
Giving a bit retaining the rest
Keeping some secret, not telling all
Gently smiling yet feeling shy
Knowing each other thus –
This our love
Isn’t it very simple and straight?
There cannot be any great mystery
In our union in months of spring
Our minds don’t fumble
Over some words with endless unknown meanings
Behind this our pleasure
There is nothing, not even a shadow –
Looking at each other’s face
We don’t search our hearts
In the months of spring
Our union is simple and straight.
Diving deep into our dialogues
We don’t seek deeper meanings
Raising our arms towards the sky
We don’t want unexpected things.
What little we give, what little we get
We want nothing beyond that –
To get more pleasure we don’t fight.
Our union in the months of spring
Is very simple and straight.
We heard that love was a limitless land
There was no end to the thirst for love
To produce the music of love
The strings of your veena must be strung very hard
We were also told
There were many lanes and by-lanes in the garden of love.
But we find our union is very simple and straight instead.
Translation of the humourous love poem Sojasuji from the collection Kshanika by Rabindranath Tagore.
