What would you say, Rabindranath,

If you could take some magic path

         And join us in Toronto?

Don’t tell me, please, that you are dead!

Speak as I lie awake in bed:

         Answer me, Rabi, pronto.

What would you now regard as best?

The world you wanted in one nest

         On red earth and khoyai,

Or all of us mixing willy-nilly

In Rome, Times Square or Piccadilly,

         L.A., Tianmen, Mumbai?

What best for your sweet Bangla tongue?

To be just spoken, read and sung

         Jol-pothe, sthole, ghate,

Or part of the babble we now hear

In cities if we cock our ear,

         Sipping our Coke or latte?

Would you, Rabi, fear and grieve

That bhodrolok should now believe

         Their children’s future safer

If in their sandwiches they stick

Maths, science and English layered thick

         With Bangla just a wafer?

That from the best ingreji schools

Pour forth the bright who yet are fools

         Faced by your sadhu bhasha?

Would rage compelling you to start

A school with a swadeshi heart

         Be now, today, still harsher?

Or would you thrill at seeing how

Translators labour now to plough

         A field where each short story

Or poem of yours can grow and bloom

In speech you too tried to assume

         But not with lasting glory?

You didn’t have a means to beam

The light of your Rabindric dream

         To each and every corner.

Would you now, at the global way

English can give your sun new day,

         Be gladder or forlorner?

Would you be sure your songs would thrive

As once you hoped they would – survive

         When your great Rochonaboli

Is just wall-cover, like the shelves

Of nick-nacks telling deshi selves

         Ekhane-o amra bangali?

If all your songs were only known

By those who from their birth had grown

         To wheezing of harmonium,

And noticed not (the sound seemed cosier)

How new artistes made songs not rosier

         But garish pandemonium?

Or would you have observed how when

A great composer travels, then

         (Beethoven in Beijing,

Puccini in New York, John Lennon

Everywhere) can shine and burgeon

         The songs he meant to sing –

Whose sounds he nijodeshe learnt

But whose creative fire burnt

         With longing to speak to all?

If just one people sings those songs

In style that just to them belongs

         What petals then can fall,

What fruits from the tree of genius

Can lie in the hands of each of us,

         Bangali or obangali?

Would you, Rabindranath, have wanted

Your songs in just one soil cemented

         Or roving digitally

Across this internetted world,

This new Kurukshetra where is hurled

         No victory spear unless

It targets world-wide excellence,

Lets others judge the truth and sense

         Of what your works express?

Which world can better – yours or ours –

Remove the national gates and bars

         You wanted to dispel?

Could Visva-Bharati ever have done

What here in Toronto with such fun

         This conference does so well?

Could Sriniketan ever gain

Relief from poverty and pain,

         From want and hunger that,

If every narrow domestic wall

Can, as it must, decay and fall,

         Our age will best combat?

You stood for freedom from all fear,

For heads held high, and vision clear.

         Are we now edging closer

To all you hoped for?  Tell me now,

Speak from the dark, please bend, please bow

         Your noble head and whisper

An answer to my jet-lagged plea:

From where you are, can you now see

         The straight, unfettered path

That in your songs, time out of mind,

You sought but could not wholly find?

         Tell me, Rabindranath!

Have you attained the total view,

The purnota which we, like you,

         Must grope for, bit by bit?

I lie in bed; you do not speak.

Out of the dark, a bath-tap leak

         Is all (I must admit)

I hear from you: it drips, it drops,

It seems to say, ‘Your fears and flops

         Are yours to fix, not mine.

I gave you questions, not replies,

No more than at its first sunrise

         My Rabi gave a sign –

Or at its last descent, to where

I too now rest in quieter air

         And even darker night

Than is the dark outside your room,

Where you, like I, must in the gloom

         Search for your own light.’

It’s half-past six.  Soon I must rise,

And shave, and bathe my bleary eyes:

         The conference starts at nine.

The drip of the tap will stay with me

As speakers, listeners, clash, agree:

         ‘Your world,’ it says, ‘not mine.’

Yet none would to this meeting-place

Have come if, free of time and space,

         A poet were not speaking:

‘Keep on, keep trying, I did no more,

I merely made, to love and adore,

         Images of my seeking –

Poems of beauty, songs of joy,

Rhymes for the learning girl or boy,

         Questions, never replies.

Don’t worry if you don’t know me yet:

When all solutions have been met,

         That day my spirit dies.’

Enough!  It’s time to wash, get up,

Or maybe fill my coffee-cup

         Once more before I dress.

There’s love in knowing no answer!  May

Rabi that truth to us convey

         And this our conference bless.