Midsummer Date

a Tagore translation

   

Outskirts of town, the end of summer, a chilling breeze ’bout
Has blown across the tired streets; the lamps are all blown out.
Dreary clouds hide the stars that otherwise join in with
The town’s evening merry air and its prospering mirth.
A shabby-looking lonely monk sits somewhere streetside;
A dusty brown headress does the majestic physique hide.
’Twas on this secluded dusk, that in the sombre wood
A rich towngirl rushes in her maroon riding hood.
Her lamp flickers held in hands as shaky as her breast
’Bout her scheduled date that night in the thicket’s nest.
A shrill call some bird resounds as she hurriedly tiptoes—
In her reverie little she notes a reclining silhouette close.


Her face reflects the warm light, deer-like black eyes shone,
A proud neck of a swan’s grace grazed her collarbone.
Her cheeks were hued as she blushed, the lamp fell off her hand:
Off it went at the monk’s feet on the pavement’s sand.
He bent down and picked it up and looked at her youthful face;
Lit it with his tobacco pipe, placing on palms full o’ grace.
She reveredly bowed b’fore the monk, and since he asked her nought
She asked him in shy composure, ‘Why this robe begot?
Revered Monk, come to my home; the road is paved in stone.
How’d you sleep through the night in the streets alone?
Stop seeking thy God thus in a quest so lonesome;
Let me take thee to my home, Young Wanderer, come.’
She held forward her graceful hand, delicate as purple vine,
For a touch or caress of which the town youth were dyin’.
Little had she antincipated that the monk could turn her down,
The cloudy darkness reflected on her forehead’s frown:
‘I’m on my way, kind damsel, that differs much from thine;
But I shall not miss it when destiny has such design.’
B’fore she could decipher herself or could simply ask him
What he'd meant by those words, she heard the fanatic scream
Of thunder; her heart leaped at the sudden scary sound
And down came the frantic rains on dry, dusty ground.


The rains were over, so is winter, the trees sprout new leaves;
From the merry spring festivities, himself the monk bereaves.
He walks well at distance from the gathering of townsfolk
For drinking and dancing in elated mood ’neath the woodland oak.
He walks past the shallow moat, into the wastelands dark,
Where lies amidst the heath shadowed by skinned treebark
The faint form of a woman. He kneels there close by;
The girl does not notice him. She’s too weak to sigh.
Her collarbone that once aroused uncontained desire
In her lovers, has now burnt in pox’s torturing fire.
Her swan-like neck is too weak to lift; he holds her black bony palms
And rubs ’em with the warmth of life, and applies herbal balms.
He removes her mantle, rubs anaesthetic on the gory scars;
One hand on her forehead, utters some obscure prayer verse.
Sitting approx the contagious disease of death’s dark hood
He drops some fruit juice in her lips, hoping her thirst to soothe.
She half opens in half consciousness one swollen blue eyelid--
‘Who’re you?’ in faint surprise asks, a husky grateful plead.
None of her old lovers who had desired her in past
Has come near her; her relatives had left her there to fast
And die, since death was for her then the only sure outcome.
The erstwhile beauty, a young monk and a distant lyre hum.
She looks at him in blurry eyes, watery with toxic pus
She can’t discern who he is, or known in days previous?
He kisses her scarred forehead, and she says, ‘You’re so kind!’
Whispering to her senseless ears, the monk his promise reminds:
‘Tonight the chance has come, my God sent me to thy care.
Rest thy aching head on m’ lap, for life is but nightmare!’

 

Translated from Rabindranath Tagore's ‘অভিসার’ by Anamitro Biswas.