Thursday, 09 September 2010
| Prantik 11 |
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A poem by Rabindranath Tagore, translated from Sanskrit by Dipak Mazumdar Come away, poet, leaving the seat arranged so long ago In the garden ringing with the din of fame. End your worship to the goddess, lost in everyman’s flattery. Blow out your lamp of words. The thousand voices of day become faint The boats which have been carrying the cargoes of sound Have anchored in the lonely banks of the evening At the end of the skies, where the chirping of birds has stopped, Floats the veil; woven in winds, As the daughter of Apsara, resting after her dance in heaven, Spreads out her arms, and burns the horizon with the glitter of gold. The sun descends, carrying the ultimate glory of the day’s end, Touching me gently on the arm filling the great void, Floods the threshold with its flaming image. A hint of truth, formed out of the invisible deep Is drawn in the sun’s ray. All the disjoined worries of life, Blown aimlessly in the uncertain wind, Like so much seaweed in the frothing seas, Will be transformed Will be shaped in a new image in the distant bank of the low river, Like some unknown shrubberies, bursting forth in untended blossoms. Nobody will ask his name, nobody will hurt him with jealousies— With vanities of prior possessions— The anemic star of memories will remain In the hazy oblivion of the unobserved nameless.  • Taken from the book A Poet’s Death: Late Poems of Rabindranath Tagore, translated by Dipak Mazumdar, published 2004 by Rupa & Co., India; translation copyright Dipak Mazumdar, 2004. Toronto resident Dipak Mazumdar is an academic economist who has taught at many universities round the world and has a long list of research publications, including seven books. He has been interested in poetry for long time, but he would like to describe himself as a consumer rather than a producer of poetry. He says that he finds one of the most rewarding way of understanding poetry is trying to put poems from one language into another. He has two books from this effort: A Poet’s Death (Rupa, New Delhi 2004) — a selection of the late poems of Rabindaranath Tagore rendered into English; and Buadelairer Kabita (Nandimukh, Calcutta, 2nd edition 2002) — a selection of translations from the French into Bengali. |
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