Monday, January 23, 2012

GETTING LOST

English Translation of  Tagore's original Bengali poem "HAARIYE JAAOA" by DEBIDAS RAY



My little daughter heard a call from her
friends below and  went down the stairs.
As she was afraid of the darkness
she was slow and hesitant in her steps.
She was carrying a lamp in her hand
which she covered carefully with part of her sari.

I stayed on the roof
It was spring; the month was Chaitra
and the night sky was full of stars.
Suddenly, I heard my daughter crying
and I hurried down to see her.
It so happened that while going down the stairs
the lamp she was carrying
had got blown off by the wind.
When I asked, “What’s the matter Bami?”
She cried from below, “I have got lost.”

On that starry night of Chaitra
when I went back to the roof
and looked at the sky, it seemed to me
that someone like my daughter Bami
was protecting the flame of a lamp
with the expanse of her sky blue apparel
and was walking slowly all by her own.
I wondered that if by chance, the light went off
and suddenly everything came to a halt, then perhaps
she too would fill the sky with her cry and scream,
“I have got lost.”



English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem entitled "Haariye Jaaoa" from his collection of poems "Palaataka" in SANCHAYITA, 4thed. 1943, p 572-573.
Published in POETRY WORLD, vol 3 (no3), July 2010, p 32-33.

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