I have not been able to tell
What I have often wanted to tell
It is only this -
I have seen this timeless world
So many times
At my door
Before my very eyes
My acquaintance
With this unknown world
Acquired with so much ease
In my everyday life
Has filled my heart to its very depth
Which I have failed to express
In simple words.
The shades
Under that lone banyan tree
Echo with the songs of the open fields;
On this side of the river
The ploughman tills
The sloping bank;
On the other side
The swan flies
To the sandy beach
Bereft of grass, bereft of life.
Like the eyes of a man
Half-asleep
The shrunken stream
In tired current
Sluggishly flows
As if frozen in time.
With footprints of ages
The road winds
Along the edges of the fields
Whose friend it seems
And the friendship of the cottages
And the river
Endures forever.
In the light of this spring
This village, those open fields,
That ferry point, the stream,
And on its verge
Those frolicking waterfowls
On that far off sandy beach
Flocking in a crowd –
All these scenes
I have seen
So many times.
My heart seeks words to express
Only these -
This drifting along the way,
This light, this breeze,
These half-heard humming sounds,
And from the drifting clouds
The shadows silently passing
Along the flowing stream -
They have held my being in a spell
Filling it time and again
With joys and sorrows.
Tanscreation of poem 41 from the collection Balaka by Rabindranath Tagore...
