Mother-loving Child

These are bad times.

People are dying of COVID-19. People are dying from lack of oxygen. People are even being killed by other people. Sitting in this far-off land, the news from India is just unbearably depressing. And yet, I cannot travel back to India to be with the people I love.

So when Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary approached this year in the middle of all this, I had to think extra-hard about what poem to translate. I was tempted to look for some poem that talks about suffering or death (which I sort of did last year), but then I decided against it. There's enough of that already out there - there's no need for me to add to it. Then I realized the day of Tagore's birthday is also Mother's Day here in the US and since I had started to translate a poem about a mother-loving child sometime ago, it would be suitable for the occasion. So here's my Tagore translation for this year. The original can be found here.

Mother-loving Child

~Rabindranath Tagore

Those who live, mother, in the clouds

They call to me, call out loud.

They say, “All we do is play,

Morning to end of the day.”

We play a game of gold at dawn,

Holding the moon, a silver one.”

I say, “How will I go on?”

They say, “Come to the field’s end.

Stand there with your arms raised,

We’ll take you into cloud-land.”

I say, “But mother’s at home

Sitting waiting for me all alone,

Without her, how can I be gone?”

Hearing that they laugh and disband.

Better, mother, if I be the clouds;

To act as my moon you can try—

I’ll cover you up with my hands,

Our roof will act as the sky.

In the waves, mother, those who live,

To me repeated calls they give.

They say, “Singing is all we do,

From the morning and all day through.”

They say, “To what lands we flow,

Their locations no one can know.”

I ask them, “How can I go?”

They say, “Come to the shore’s end.

Stand there with your eyes closed,

We’ll take you into wave-land.”

I say, “But mother looks out,

In the evening my name she’ll shout,

Her, how can I live without?”

Hearing that they laugh and disband.

Better, mother, I’ll be the waves,

You’ll be some land from afar.

I’ll jump and fall into your lap,

No one will know where we are.

(Translated and illustrated by Sugata Banerji)