The Haiku

This is the fragments of a 'Haiku' created by Tagore. He started writing this in China and Japan, and finished in Balatonfüred, Hungary, at November 1926. He went there to treat his chest disease.For a much detailed account and a full English Translation of the poem, please visit

http://terebess.hu/english/tagore5.html

On memoiers

Who keeps on curving the frescoes of life upon the canvas of memories? I don't know. But whosoever draws the brush is creating a picture, that I know for certain. In other words, he is not bothering much about corresponding with the archetype, the original. He is simply doing what he desiers - keeping some and erasing others, whichever way his vision allows him to drift. To him, insignificant things may hold profound importance, and profound issues may bear little importance. He doesn't hesitate to scatter the chain of events, like a God playing with his dices. In this perspective, his only function is to paint his thoughts into the canvas, not the recollection of history....

(above: Tagore's paintings - Mask (left) and Dancing Girl (Right).

The Begining

"The family where I opened my eyes for the first time was somehow.....isolated. It was like a city outside a city, where the air was open and the sky was free, largely owing to the absense of neighborhood dwellings crowding around. Long time ago, the Tagore family weighed the anchor of society and drifted beyond the reach of the harbors, into the mid ocean.

The rules, regulations, cutoms and philosophy were elegently antique - yet breathing and basking in the air of modernity with full rigor. It was very natural that something different would spawn itself in the secluded shadows........just like the different plants, animals, and people in a far-off island."

My freedom (A small fragment of the poem)

My freedom dawns in the light

That blossoms the sky,

In the dust swirling across the grass

I see my freedom fly.

Far beyond my existence,

I lost myself, only me,

My freedom sings from the earth, the people, and the sea.