Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

The Home

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset
was hiding its last gold like a miser.
The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness,
and the widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.
A boy's shrill voice rose into the sky.
He walked the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song
across the hush of the evening.
His village home lay there at the end of the waste land,
beyond the sugar cane field, hidden among the shadows
of the banana and the slender areca palm, the coconut
and the green jack-fruit trees.
I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight,
and saw spread before me the darkened earth
surrounding with her arms countless homes
furnished with cradles and beds,
mothers' hearts and evening lamps,
and young lives glad with a gladness
that knows nothing of its value for the world.


translated from the Bengalese by the author