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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