This poem caught my eye the moment I read it, because of the gorgeous, lush imagery and beautiful use of contrast.
When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides
shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.
This is one of those Tagore poems that I want someone to read out to me! Someone like Matthew Macfadyen or even maybe Amitabh Bachchan.
P.S. Expect something a little different, yet Tagore-related to come up soon on the blog :)
7 comments:
Oh yes yes yes, Big B should certainly read this for ME! :)
I LOVED this one :)
I would love for Amitabh Bachchan to read out poetry to me, too. Or anything, for that matter. :)
Can't wait for the other Tagore-related thing on your blog.
Haha I would go for Matthew Macfayden :) This one speaks of ultimate hope. Just what we need for Diwali. You feel all lit up inside when you read this :) Happy Diwali Kals!
It's interesting to me the range of topics he writes poems about. Is a lot of his work spiritual?
Veens, Priya - Oh Big B's voice is absolutely amazing. His narration for Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar are some of my faves :)
Vaishnavi - Hehe, he's my first choice too. He's too gorgeous ;) Ah indeed...Happy Diwali to you and yours! Have a wonderful day :)
Alyce - This poem and the few ones before this have all been taken from his Nobel prize winning Gitanjali, the focus of which is on spirituality in a sense. But that is just one of the things in his repertoire. He writes about nature, the country, society, women (He was a fervent feminist) and indeed the world as a whole :)
Many thanks for the post. So good to see that some people still try to read Tagore. Sorry to say though that most translations (including his own) are rather poor: you need to hear them in the original Bengali. That is why people keep coming up with new translations... you might look up The Oxford Tagore series.
I got to know about this blog through Vaishnavi's. I am a book lover myself, though I write sparingly about them, as you can check out on my blog. May I put your blog on my blog-roll?
With best wishes,
Suvro Chatterjee
suvro.chatterjee@gmail.com
Dear Suvro Chatterjee,
Thanks so much for dropping by my blog and posting this comment :) Translations rarely bring across the grandeur of the original and I've heard the same about Tagore's too (Especially from a wonderful introduction to Tagore's works and what is 'lost' in translation by Ketaki Kushari Dyson)
I must say I'm envious of all those who know Bengali and can experience Gurudev's magic in its purest form :)
I'd love to learn Bengali (as I would love to learn Urdu) to just read the rich literature and poetry of the language. I hadn't heard of the Oxford Tagore series and I'm definitely adding that to my list. Thanks for the reco :)
Please feel free to add my blog to your blog roll and I'm off to see your blog. Thanks again :)
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