I Won't Let You Go by Rabindranath Tagore Ketaki Kushari Dyson Page A

weeping?
                  Has the morning lost    its morning star?
                        Are these its dewdrops peeping?
                  Has the spring gone?    And is that why
                        the forest goddess is wailing?
                  Is wild memory    sitting on the grave
                        of buried hope, complaining?
                  Or is a meteor    missing its home,
                        the blue sky, which it’s mourning?
                  Why these tears?
    BRIDE .                       For my pussy-cat
                        left at home, I’m crying. 
    In the Back Garden
    GROOM .   Lighting up this space beneath a tree,
                        what are you doing in the forest greensward?
                  Look at these locks    brushing your soft cheeks!
                        Aren’t they wily? Aren’t they wayward?
                  Look at this stream    curling at your feet:
                        as it flows, it seems to weep.
                  All day long    you’re listening to its song:
                        tell me, isn’t it lulling you to sleep?
                  Fallen flowers    heaped on your cloth-end,
                        sad and neglected: what a shame!
                  Remembering someone’s    face, did you
                        make mistakes as you tried to thread ’em?
                  The breeze that blows,    swaying your ear-rings,
                        of whom does it whisper in your ears?
                  The busy bees    with their specious buzzing –
                        whose name do they murmur? Can you hear?
                  Your eyes are smiling,    your memories happy
                        in this deliciously private grove.
                  What are you doing    in this arbour, this alcove?
    BRIDE .           Sitting and eating some juicy jujubes.
    GROOM .   I’ve come to you    to tell you all
                        that’s pent up in my wretched mind.
                  Weary of its own    weight, this heart
                        can nowhere any comfort find.
                  My mind’s a-flutter    with je ne sais quoi
                        in this honeyed springtime.
                  Recklessly    does the wind entreat
                        the malati buds to open.
                  Ah, those eyes –    they look toward me –
                        a message of hope is being expressed!
                  And that heart bursts,    a love escapes,
                        half-nervous, half-embarrassed.
                  Day and night    my soul is awake
                        only for your sake;
                  wants to give its all    in your service,
                        from you its commands to take.
                  My life, my youth –    everything I’ll risk,
                        plunder the world to fetch you a gift.
                  Sweetheart, tell me –    what can I fix?
    BRIDE .          Get me more jujubes, – say, another six.
    GROOM .   Well then, friend,    let me depart
                        with a life vacant, despondent.
                  Might you shed    but one tear-drop
                        for me when I am