1.
What is anxiety playmate? Playmate, what is agony?
You all say day and night ‘love, love’-
Tell me, playmate, what is love! Is it only torment?
It is only shedding tears? Is that only sorrow’s breathing?
Why then in what expectation of joy
People hopefully embrace such sorrow?
In my eyes all is handsome,
All fresh, all spotless, blue sky, darkgreen wood
Liberal moonlight, soft flower-every thing like me.
They only smile, only sing, wish to die after a sportive game-
knows no pain, knows no crying, above all kinds of agony.
Flowers laugh while they get shed, moonlight smilingly disappears,
In the sea of light the star, all smiles, does his form abandon.
Who is happy like me? Come playmate, come near to me-
The joyous song of a happy heart will feed your mind with solace.
If every day you cry, why not laugh for a single day-
Forget all sadness for at least a day, let all of us sing together.
2.
On a rainy day when the wind gets wild
My untamed mind wakes up.
Outside the realm of the known, where no path can be found
There goes my mind on its own.
Will it ever go home-ward now.
No, no it will not go there-
All the impediments are gone.
The evening is rain-intoxicated, which god’s disciple I am,
They dance around my mind enmeshes the votaries
all the votaries.
I ask what I shouldn’t ask for
Once cannot get what cannot be got
Won’t get, won’t get,
I vainly lay myself at the feel of the impossible.
3.
My days got restive of the golden cage
Those multi-coloured days of mine.
They got our of the fetters of joy and crying
Those multi-coloured days of mine.
The words of my soul’s song
I had hopes they might learn-
They flew away, without saying much
Those multi-coloured days of mine.
I dream, they circle round my broken cage
In expectation of meeting someone
Those multi-coloured days of mine.
So much pain can’t be all deception.
Are they all shadowy birds.
Is nothing left at the horizon
Those multi-coloured days of mine.
–from Selected Songs of Rabindranath Tagore,
translated by Abu Rushd
