Playthings

CHILD, HOW happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.

I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.

I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.

Perhaps you glance at me and think, 'What a stupid game to spoil

your morning with!'

Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud pies.

I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver.

With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain.

In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.

 

 

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Rendition

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19
 Verses
ON THIS SIDE of the water there is no landing; the girls do not come here to fetch water; the land along its edge is shaggy with stunted shrubs; a noisy flock of saliks dig their nests in the steep bank under whose frown the fisher-boats find no shelter
        You sit there on the unfrequented grass, and the morning wears on. Tell me what you do on this bank so dry that it is agape with cracks?
        She looks in my face and says, 'Nothing, nothing whatsoever.'
On this side of the river the bank is deserted, and no cattle come to water.
Only some stray goats from the village browse the scanty grass all day, and the solitary water-hawk watches from an uprooted peepal aslant over the mud.
        You sit there alone in the miserly shade of a shimool, and the morning wears on.
        Tell me, for whom do you wait?
She looks in my face and says, 'No one, no one at all!'
আরো দেখুন
98
 Verses
MY LOVE OF to-day finds no home
in the nest deserted by yesterday's love.
আরো দেখুন
226
 Verses
THOSE WHO have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.
আরো দেখুন

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