LIFE' S GUARDIAN

Oh my most intimate one,

Have you quenched all your thirst

                     getting into my heart? 

Crushing my chest like the grapes in a vineyard

I squeezed million streams of joy and sorrow

and after filling the cup, I offered it to you.

So many colours, so many scents,

so many tunes and so many verses,         

I stitched together to make your bridal bed.

I kept on melting the gold of desire

and made new images every day

                            for your transient plays.

You only chose me –

 I don’t know with what fond  hope .

Oh you the guardian of my life,

did you like my mornings and my nights -

my acts and my plays during your lonely stay?        

In rains and in autumn, in winter and spring,

the heartfelt sound of all those songs,       

did you manage to hear them all   

while sitting alone on your throne?

Plucking the flowers of your dream

on the expanse of your apparel ,

did you stitch them to make a garland    

to put on yourself and unmindfully  

roam around in the garden of my youth?  

With your eyes fixed in my heart  

what are you looking for, my sweetheart?  

Have you forgiven all my failings, omissions and mistakes?

For days without puja and the nights without service,

how many times you went back my lord

while the flowers for offering blossomed and withered

in the forlorn forest.

The pitch to which you tuned the strings of this veena  

went down and down time and again,

The music that you composed - oh my poet –

can I ever aspire to sing ?                

When I went there to water your garden

I fell asleep in the shade, 

In the evening when I came back,

I came with eyes full of tears.

Whatever I possessed - oh lord of my life -

Have I now exhausted them all -

the shows and the songs,

the vivacity, wakefulness and slumber?

Lax has become my embrace,

gone is the passion from my kisses -      

Has the night’s love tryst in life’s grove      

ended at its dawn?

Dissolve then, our meeting of today,

bring in new fashion and new shows -

Accept me once more as your own

renewing the old familiar one.

A new marriage will tie me down  

to a new knot in life.

English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem entitled

 “Jibananath” from his collection of poems “Chitra” in

Sanchayita, 11^th ed. 2010. pp.265-7.

The first line of the original Bengali poem is – Ohey antaratama.

Published in THE VISVA-BHARATI QUARTERLY

Dec 2016 p1-3.