OH POET, OH SONGWRITER, OH PROPHET
The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;
and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,
unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon
many a fleeting moment of my life.
— Rabindranath Tagore
How was it that I found you in these pages creased and worn,
in this paperback book with broken spine wanting to
release the weakening hold on these yellowing sheets sublime—
When did your open heart begin to beckon my soul?
My nightmares wallowed in dirt until you freed them into
soft dreams of many I have loved and who loved me.
You showed me the faces of dirty angels aching
to be made incarnate for just one night to read you
and, because we found you, to come and lie with me.
The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;
Then it was that you found me instead in the bookmark
of a year, a long year flagged for stillness and thought,
one that clung to your poems as the days slowly turned,
then fell from the others to be creased and worn, and
made to steal hearts in the night as only dirty angels can.
You did not turn in contempt when time and again I bowed
to the fallen angels I found on the roads you described,
those beloved ones who knew your lord far better than I,
but, like I, with dancing light and sweet song were endowed —
and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,
your ageless words for the surprising ages and the phases
of mankind questioning the darkness within rang true —
yet not all at once, not in a first reading, but later
did I yearn to know you well, to see your face, to hear
the voice of one whose Voice I treasure, oh poet,
oh songwriter, oh prophet of a hoped-for dawn
of knowledge and reason, thought and action,
of ever-widening concepts of truth and of faith.
And in the stillness and thought of that year long gone
unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon
this gratitude of mine so humbly told, so deeply felt —
The paupers and children you knew know how I feel,
the seashores and the footsteps you wrote of are imprinted
with the memory of your depth; so, too, are the hearts
of every lover who ever waited in the dark.
Whether they were whore or monk, husband or wife,
each hoped for tenderness to visit for a while and
each prayed for transcendence in his/her own way.
Your supreme poems, oh Nobel one, have made rife
many a fleeting moment of my life.
***
Written for dVerse Poets Pub FormForAll, where Samuel Peralta's prompt is
Paying Tribute, Page and the Glosa. Please visit the link to read Sam's soaring glosa, titled "The Dream," which is his tribute to poet P.K. Page. Sam's writing prompt instruction on this poetic form is as follows:
The glosa is a form of poetry from the late 14th century and was popular in the Spanish court. The introduction, the cabeza, is a quatrain quoting a well-known poem or poet. The second part is the glosa proper, expanding on the theme of the cabeza, consisting of four ten-line stanzas, with the lines of the cabeza used to conclude each stanza. Lines six and nine must rhyme with the borrowed tenth. There are no rules governing meter and line length, except that traditionally, they emulate the style of the lines in the cabeza. Because of its structure, the glosa is ideally used as a poem of tribute – as Page did for Neruda in “Planet Earth”, and as I do for Page in “The Dream”. In writing that tribute, you weave your lines with the lines of the opening cabeza, collaborating, as it were, with the spirit of the poet you honour.
***
A native of Calcutta, India, who wrote in Bengali and often translated his own work into English, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 — the first Asian to receive the honor. He wrote poetry, fiction, drama, essays, and songs; promoted reforms in education, aesthetics and religion; and in his late sixties he even turned to the visual arts, producing 2,500 paintings and drawings before his death.
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Full text,
Gitanjali - Poem 43 -
by Rabindranath Tagore (entire work online text here)
The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;
and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,
unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon
many a fleeting moment of my life.
And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature,
I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of
joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.
Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust,
and the steps that I heard in my playroom
are the same that are echoing from star to star.
.
