Accept me, my lord, accept me for this while.
Let those orphaned days that passed without thee be forgotten.
Only spread this little moment wide across thy lap, holding it under thy light.
I have wandered in pursuit of voices that drew me yet led me nowhere.
Now let me sit in peace and listen to thy words in the soul of my silence.
Do not turn away thy face from my heart’s dark secrets, but burn them till they are alight with thy fire.
words by Rabindranath Tagore, image by Paul Heussenstamm
84
Over the green and yellow rice-fields sweep the shadows of the
autumn clouds followed by the swift chasing sun.
The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with light they
foolishly hover and hum.
The ducks in the islands of the river clamour in joy for mere
nothing.
Let none go back home, brothers, this morning, let none go to
work.
Let us take the blue sky by storm and plunder space as we run.
Laughter floats in the air like foam on the flood.
Brothers, let us squander our morning in futile songs.
— excerpted from Rabindranath Tagore’s The Gardener (1915), the whole of which i just finished reading aloud. OM, Tagore speaks the soul.
12
If you would be busy and fill your pitcher, come, O come to my
lake.
The water will cling round your feet and babble its secret.
The shadow of the coming rain is on the sands, and the clouds
hang low upon the blue lines of the trees like the heavy hair
above your eyebrows.
I know well the rhythm of your steps, they are beating in my
heart.
Come, O come to my lake, if you must fill your pitcher.
If you would be idle and sit listless and let your pitcher float
on the water, come, O come to my lake.
The grassy slope is green, and the wild flowers beyond number.
Your thoughts will stray out of your dark eyes like birds from
their nests.
Your veil will drop to your feet.
Come, O come to my lake if you must sit idle.
If you would leave off your play and dive in the water, come, O
come to my lake.
Let your blue mantle lie on the shore; the blue water will cover
you and hide you.
The waves will stand a-tiptoe to kiss your neck and whisper in
your ears.
Come, O come to my lake, if you would dive in the water.
If you must be mad and leap to your death, come, O come to my
lake.
It is cool and fathomlessly deep.
It is dark like a sleep that is dreamless.
There in its depths nights and days are one, and songs are
silence.
Come, O come to my lake, if you would plunge to your death.
If we kept the search-light of our observation turned upon the
fact of death, the world would appear to us like a huge charnel-
house; but in the world of life the thought of death has, we
find, the least possible hold upon our minds. Not because it is
the least apparent, but because it is the negative aspect of
life; just as, in spite of the fact that we shut our eyelids
every second, it is the openings of the eye that count. Life as
a whole never takes death seriously. It laughs, dances and
plays, it builds, hoards and loves in death’s face. Only when we
detach one individual fact of death do we see its blankness and
become dismayed. We lose sight of the wholeness of a life of
which death is part. It is like looking at a piece of cloth
through a microscope. It appears like a net; we gaze at the big
holes and shiver in imagination. But the truth is, death is not
the ultimate reality. It looks black, as the sky looks blue; but
it does not blacken existence, just as the sky does not leave its
stain upon the wings of the bird.
Do not go to the garden of flowers!
O friend! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals
of the lotus, and there gaze
on the infinite beauty.
TIME after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.
You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.
I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I
made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard
of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my
heart out.
Take, oh take--has now become my cry.
Shatter all from this beggar's bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate
watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts
into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.
BE ready to launch forth, my heart! and let those linger who must.
For your name has been called in the morning sky.
Wait for none!
The desire of the bud is for the night and dew, but the blown flower cries
for the freedom of light.Burst your sheath, my heart, and come forth!
more Tagore from Gathering Fruit
WHERE roads are made I lose my way.
And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way.
In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.
The pathway is hidden by the birds' wings, by the star-fires, by the
flowers of the wayfaring seasons.
-Rabindranath Tagore from Fruit Gathering (1916)
OM NAMAH SHIVAYA
a place for the forms
& formlessnesses
of divinity
Come along with me to the India
of Anandamayi Ma:
the world pulse yatra travel blog
follow bindu drops
feed yr words to my eyes
all as one
you listen
i listen
aural devotion
