My friends know that I translate a poem by Rabindranath Tagore every year on Tagore's birthday. I have been doing this since 2006, the year I started this blog. I recently realized that there was no easy way to find all of these translations in one place, and so here's a list of all that I have translated over the years.
- Poems
- The River (This is my first translation, done when I was an undergrad)
- The Palm Tree
- The Two Birds
- The Hero
- The Poet's Age
- Africa
- Judgment
- Identity
- Small and Big
- The Schoolmaster
- Strange Ambitions
- The Right Place
- The Poet
- Tiny poems embedded within posts:
- Prose:
Compromise
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Today, tell your mind this,
Whatever comes, good or bad,
Accept the truth with ease.
Some people may love you
Others are never meant to,
Some are ever grateful, others
Don’t owe a cent to you.
Some of it is their nature
Some of it is yours, brother,
Partly, the way of this world ---
Not each one suits the other.
Some will bluff you at times,
At other times, you will bluff,
You will get your share,
Others get the remaining stuff.
From times immemorial
That’s how things have worked
How can you be so lucky that
You’ll get through unmarked!
Today, tell your mind this,
Good or bad whatever may come
Accept the truth with ease.
Weathering many a storm you reach
The port of happiness to rest
An underwater hidden cliff
Strikes you inside the chest,
Instantly your weary ribs
Tremble with a painful creak---
Does that mean with everyone
A deathly quarrel you must seek?
If you can stay afloat
That’s the best thing to do,
If you cannot, then quietly
Sink without much ado.
That wouldn’t be unusual,
It’s a common incident ---
Where people don’t fear
Shipwrecks are most frequent.
So tell your mind this,
Whatever comes, good or bad,
Accept the truth with ease.
Not everyone is sized for you
Nor you made in everyone’s size,
You seem to die of someone’s shove
By your squeeze, someone dies---
Still, if we think it through,
Over everything must we vie?
The proper approach can give
A lot of happiness if you try.
The sky remains as blue as ever,
Sweet seems the light of dawn,
When death arrives, we find
Better to live than to be gone.
For those whom we closed our eyes
And cried out a tearful sea
Even without them we find
The world is pretty good to see.
So tell your mind this,
Whatever comes, good or bad,
Accept the truth with ease.
At the sunset if you sit,
Let your large shadow loom
And with your own fault
Fill your life with gloom,
If fate you choose to fight
And dig yourself a grave,
Then please finish this task
As soon as you can, we crave.
Weep a while if you must
Filling pitchers from your eyes,
With your mind then somehow
Brother, compromise.
Then, in your dark chamber
A lamp you must shine---
Forget, brother, with whom
Your ideas don’t align.
So tell your mind this,
Whatever comes, good or bad,
Accept the truth with ease.
(Translated by Sugata Banerji)
