Indian

These are modern English translations of poems by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who has been called the "Bard of Bengal" and "the Bengali Shelley." In 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore was also a notable artist, musician and polymath.

The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

These days it is wise
to be learned, certified and appointed.
You can be safe

hammering your thought.
Speak or do not. The day enrolls.
Academics, Seminarians,

professional theoreticians,
and a pack of barking dogs. You
become one, quarrelsome

who seldom bites.

Upon the darkened prairie
a Comanche Moon shines,
rising from the horizon
and a swath of yellow pines.

Rousted from the tall grass
where buffaloes once roamed--
rabbits, ferrets and bobwhites
from the safety of their homes.

The ground doth tremble
and the earth doth quake.
Advancing shadows from the forest
disrupt the peaceful state.

Grasshoppers fly from their perch.
Wolf packs bound out of sight.
Something deadly stalks the prairie
shedding blood on the moon this night.