Fruit Gathering

Fruit Gathering
Tagore

You touched me and tingled into love.

You love to discover that I love this world where you have brought me.

But my sword is forged, my armour is put on, my horse is eager to run.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

But in my eyes there is a film of shame and in my breast a flicker of fear; my face is veiled and I weep when I cannot see you.

Yet I know the endless thirst in your heart for sight of me, the thirst that cries at my door in the repeated knockings of sunrise.

The nearer I draw to you the deeper grows the fervour in the dance of the sea.
Let me not sink and disappear in the depth of languor.
Let not my life be worn out to tatters by penury of waste.
Let not those doubts encompass me, the dust of distractions.
Let me not pursue many paths to gather many things.
Let me not bend my heart to the yoke of the many.

YOU have set me among those who are defeated.
I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game.
I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom.
I shall play the game of my undoing.
I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.

But I am thankful that my lot lies with the humble who suffer and bear the burden of power, and hide their faces and stifle their sobs in the dark.
For every throb of their pain has pulsed in the secret depth of thy night, and every insult has been gathered into thy great silence. And the morrow is theirs.
O Sun, rise upon the bleeding hearts blossoming in flowers of the morning, and the torchlight revelry of pride shrunken to ashes.

Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves?
Does it not also sing with the waves that fall?

Let me hold it to my forehead and press it to my heart.
When the night grows still and stars come out one by one I will spread it on my lap and stay silent.
The rustling leaves will read it aloud to me, the rushing stream will chant it, and the seven wise stars will sing it to me from the sky.
I cannot find what I seek, I cannot understand what I would learn; but this unread letter has lightened my burdens and turned my thoughts into songs.

No: it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.
Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.
But no colours appear, and no perfume.
Ah! it is not for you to open the bud into a blossom.
He who can open the bud does it so simply.

I WILL meet one day the Life within me, the joy that hides in my life, though the days perplex my path with their idle dust.
I have known it in glimpses, and its fitful breath has come upon me, making my thoughts fragrant for a while.
I will meet one day the Joy without me that dwells behind the screen of light and will stand in the overflowing solitude where all things are seen as by their creator.

The cry of desire eddied round a chasm of despair, a wailing bird circling its empty nest.

WHEN I thought I would mould you, an image from my life for men to worship, I brought my dust and desires and all my coloured delusions and dreams.
When I asked you to mould with my life an image from your heart for you to love, you brought your fire and force, and truth, loveliness and peace.

You were in the centre of my heart, therefore when my heart wandered she never found you; you hid yourself from my loves and hopes till the last, for you were always in them.
You were the inmost joy in the play of my youth, and when I was too busy with the play the joy was passed by.
You sang to me in the ecstasies of my life and I forgot to sing to you.

Day after day you buy your sunrise from my heart, and you find your love carven into the image of my life.

The child sitting in the dust is your destined bride; her play will be stilled and deepened into love.