"lullabying" poems
The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with hollow shells.
They weave boats out of withered leaves and laughingly float them out over the vast deep.
Earth's children play gaily on the seashores of endless worlds.
They do not know, yet, how to cast nets or swim.
Divers fish for pearls and merchants sail their ships, while earth's children skip, gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They are unaware of hidden treasures, nor do they know how to cast nets, yet.
The sea surges with laughter, smiling palely on the seashore.
Death-dealing waves sing the children meaningless songs, like a mother lullabying her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with the children, smiling palely on the seashore.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children meet.
Tempests roam pathless skies, ships lie wrecked in uncharted waters, death wanders abroad, and still the children play.
On the seashores of endless worlds there is a great gathering of earth's children.
Originally published by The Chained Muse. My translation is based on an untitled text in Bangla (Bengali) first published in 1912 and known as "60" due to its numerical placement. Tagore made history by becoming the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. Keywords/Tags: seashore, gathering, children, sky, sea, water, dance, sand castles, shells, boats, play, nets, swim, fish, pearls, ships, waves, songs, mother, lullaby, baby, cradle, tempests, death
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 11:03 PM UTC
David flew into my bedroom
light blue eyes flashing excitement
"Sonya ki," he gushed
"We are now the proud parents
of a newborn baby pineapple!"
For two years David fathered
and diligently nurtured the
pineapple cutting from
the Yoga ashram
Cooing, lullabying,
coaxing, fertilizing
I threw on my sandals
and dashed into the
bucolic nursery
There peeking up at us
it's amber pink body
swaddled in spiky
leaves
was our own little
darling pineapple
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
I hate dreaming about her,
Her hands immediate and cold,
Peeling back my shirt,
I lay down with my arms over my face and say:
'you shouldn't be allowed,'
In the time between night and day,
The puddle blue sky towers over me,
Pokes me back into sleep,
Where she might be.
How dare she!
Kind and gentle, her voice lullabying me into ease,
My mouth rising with a smile at the edges only to remember and feel double crushed,
Pressed into the bed by her shoe,
And worse,
Sometimes reality plays out and I have to relive it,
Like having my arm broken twice to reset the bone,
Crunch crunch,
I feel violated because my brain is for me and she shouldn't be allowed into the soft parts without my permission.
I wake and start the day with the stone in my throat and swallow and swallow and it does go away.
Oct 26, 2022
Oct 26, 2022 at 11:16 AM UTC
They move as lace
through the discarnate night;
Soft, volitional footsteps along disturbing corridors,
with outstretched
scalpel-esque appendages,
********* five, adjacent, stimulating patterns-
getting deeper-
Deeper.
And flashing their leer
of quivering needles.
Lullabying odiums to Johnny-leper;
Drinking his breath in the night.
O, for an exposed ripe?
Seeing only a diced-fraction of hell?
Will you not rest in the light?
Or wisp away in the rigid winds of reality?
The dawn is riding forward-
As the last tree in the forest falls with a whisper.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 7:55 PM UTC
paint me this picture, sonorous color
clutching the quiet ****
pressed against cloying scenes,
a loose hand bannering a bayonet.
rivet me waters, and much of the Earth
tightly groping inlands,
thatched in the branch nowhere alone,
is the song of God lullabying cities.
again the whole sky with its keen eyes
manifests a gleam worth knowing a cherub,
and sooner than it is later, when the seasons
postpone their flamboyances, chiaroscuros of smoke,
deceit, uncared for and unheard shrieks bounce off careless corners
and the song of God is but static with little wings clipped
and tossed into vicissitude:
song or no song
bearing a fruition of attrition:
resounding far-away: a comatose of cars,
a scuffle of powerlines, a melee of battlement and tranquil
continually fluster the child
in metronomic dance.
Jan 19, 2016
Jan 19, 2016 at 3:34 AM UTC
Sometimes you can hear not with ears, but with a skin: with your fingers on fabric, with your hair sinking thought the palms, with your muscles on anxious joints.
Sometimes you can hear not the music, but emotions. Words, voices, harmony, rhythm, — all of them are spiralling into one multidimensional Rubik's Cube; all of them are thickening into a rich hodgepodge of colours; and then you can’t understand if the drums are ringing inside of your brains or if the song itself is closing its eyes with joy.
Sometimes you can hear nothing.
And nothing can sometimes hear you.
Today you hear winter.
Being on the ground floor it’d be like being outside.
Your elbows are on a windowsill. Your droopy eyes are chained to a sleepy late-night path.
You are therefore one short step from that path: just breathe and touch the earth with your cosy socks. The earth is chubby because of yesterday’s raindrops.
Smells like roaring lorry. Hears like water and warm winter.
The colour palette is in shades of a half past four morning.
On the opposite side of your street your neighbour still keeps Christmas: the garland made of white-blue lights flickers during four finger taps, and is lit during three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. You can almost hear ‘Fantaisie Impromptu’ by Chopin. Right. Four. Left. Three.
That white-blue trembling sneaks into puddles along with the low smiles of lanterns further down the block. The blue glow is dancing, the copper illumination is dearer.
The cat runs — grey mouse — grey stain — on the canvas.
The windows are like card backs in Tarot spread on the walls like on the tables.
The windows are mirrors, and the mirrors are caves.
The windows run with perspective.
With the cat.
Tell us, sky! Do you exist? Have you been always franking us? Both on the left, both on the right one cannot find a difference. Your colour is lullabying.
Your colour is dual; at first glance it’s pure blue-plum gouache, but looking closely… The sky is scarlet. Scarlet as a wisp of a tapestry.
The scarpestry breaks through plumouache.
Suddenly a little white twinkle hops into winter, and suddenly dies.
Your heart has grown to your tongue root and to your little alcove under your ribs, and the heart is writing-writing-writing, and is escorting passing cars, and is fuming-fuming-fuming, and is sweating like in a sauna.
It’s dribbling outside.
Homely.
Nothingly.
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 12:33 PM UTC