Thursday, October 12, 2006

The Palm Tree


The Palm Tree
~Rabindranath Tagore

The palm tree:  on one leg stands tall
            Towering above all
                  Peering into the sky.
In his mind,    black clouds he wants to sever
            Fly away forever-
                  But he hasn't wings to fly.
.

That's why,     at the top of his head
            In his leaves rounded
                  His wish he unfolds.
Imagines,       his wings are they,
            No ban on flying away,
                  Leaving his household.
.

Whole day,      with rustling sound
            The leaves sway around
                  He's flying, he feels-
In his mind    The sky he treads
            The stars he evades
                  As if going somewhere else.
.

At Last        when the wind dies out,
            Leaves stop swaying about,
                  His mind turns back to look-
As he thinks:   the soil is his mom,
            He likes again his home
                  The Earth's cozy nook.






(Translated by me. Went crazy trying to format the text as the original poem. Ultimately could format but the font had to be changed... and had to put dots for inserting blank lines between stanzas. I'll keep trying.)

14 comments:

  1. Nice one buddy. Now you can seriously take up this task of traslating selective Tagore poems for the sake of people like us who are deprived of the flavor of real poetry. This photo remind me of a first prize winner in our intra-company competition.
    Nice poem indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. hmmm...good one
    how abt tryin ur hand at writin sm original poetry. Aftr all this analysis n reviewing m sure u wont b that bad

    ReplyDelete
  3. :) Nice. I agree, why dont you write an original one?

    ReplyDelete
  4. @abhijit: Actually I had taken this photo long back. When I saw that prize winner, I remembered my palm tree photo, which started a chain of thought which resulted in this blog post.

    @aurindam & shreemoyee: Thanks... I don't write an original one because knowing Englissh is not enough to write poems... You need poetic talent for that... which I don't have.
    Kobi kobi bhaab, chhander abhaab! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. came in search of new post, and found that Palm Tree is not growing, it has freezed for a moment. :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. A nice one. Is that picture is the winner of Wipro contest rite.

    view my blog at http://blogs.bepenfriends.com/bepenfriends

    ReplyDelete
  7. @bepenfriends: No. It is not the winner of the Wipro photo contest. I took this photo several years ago and did not enter it in the contest. However, the first prize winner is very similar to this photo.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "tomar lekhani mahioshi"

    your translation is fantastic

    ReplyDelete
  9. @anonymous: Dhonyobaad. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete