বইল বাতাস,
     পাল তবু না জোটে--
ঘাটের শানে
     নৌকো মাথা কোটে।

SPRING SCATTERS the petals of flowers
that are not for the fruits of the future
but for the moment's whim

YOU MAKER of pictures,
a ceaseless traveller among men and things,
rounding them up in your net of vision
and bringing them out in lines
far above their social value and market price.
Yonder colony of the outcaste,
its crowd of rustic roofs,
and an empty field in the background
scorched by the angry April sun
are hurriedly passed by and never missed,
till your wayfaring lines spoke out;
they are there,
and we started up and said, indeed they are.
Those nameless tramps fading away every moment into shadows
were rescued from their nothingness
and compelled us to acknowledge
a greater appeal of the real in them
than is possessed by the rajahs
who lavish money on their portraits of dubious worth
for fools to gape at in wonder.
You ignored the mythological steed of paradise
when your eyes were caught by a goat
who is only noticed with our expostulation
when straying on our brinjal plot.
You brought out its own majesty of goatliness in your lines
and our mind woke up into a surprise.
The poor goat-seller remains ignorant of the fact
that the picture does not represent the commonplace beast that is
his own,
but it is a discovery.