সেটুকু তোর অনেক আছে
                   যেটুকু তোর আছে খাঁটি,
            তার চেয়ে লোভ করিস যদি
                   সকলি তোর হবে মাটি।
                   একমনে তোর একতারাতে
                   একটি যে তার সেইটে বাজা,
            ফুলবনে তোর একটি কুসুম
                   তাই নিয়ে তোর ডালি সাজা।
            যেখানে তোর বেড়া সেথায়
                   আনন্দে তুই থামিস এসে,
            যে কড়ি তোর প্রভুর দেওয়া
                   সেই কড়ি তুই নিস রে হেসে।
            লোকের কথা নিস নে কানে,
                   ফিরিস নে আর হাজার টানে,
            যেন রে তোর হৃদয় জানে
                   হৃদয়ে তোর আছেন রাজা--
            একতারাতে একটি যে তার
                   আপন মনে সেইটি বাজা।

O YOU shaggy-headed banyan tree standing on the bank of the pond, have you forgotten the little child, like the birds that have nested in your branches and left you?
Do you not remember how he sat at the window and wondered at the tangle of your roots that plunged underground?
The women would come to fill their jars in the pond, and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water like sleep struggling to wake up.
Sunlight danced on the ripples like restless tiny shuttles weaving golden tapestry.
Two ducks swam by the weedy margin above their shadows, and the child would sit still and think.
He longed to be the wind and blow through your rustling branches, to be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water, to be a bird and perch on your top-most twig, and to float like those ducks among the weeds and shadows.

WHEN THE GONG sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our lane,
Every day I meet the hawker crying, 'Bangles, crystal bangles!'
There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home.
I wish I were a hawker, spending my day in the road, crying, 'Bangles, crystal bangles!'
When at four in the afternoon I come back from the school,
I can see through the gate of that house the gardener digging the
ground.
He does what he likes with his spade, he soils his clothes with dust, nobody takes him to task if he gets baked in the sun or gets wet.
I wish I were a gardener digging away at the garden with nobody to stop me from digging.
Just as it gets dark in the evening and my mother sends me to bed,
I can see through my open window the watchman walking up and down.
The lane is dark and lonely, and the street-lamp stands like a giant with one red eye in its head.
The watchman swings his lantern and walks with his shadow at his side, and never once goes to bed in his life.
I wish I were a watchman walking the streets all night, chasing the shadows with my lantern.