TO THE PAINTER

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

You maker of pictures, a ceaseless traveller

among men and things,

rounding them up in your net of vision

and bringing their social value and market price.

Yonder colony of the outcaste,

its crowd of music 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 to 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 in 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-setter remains ignorant of the fact

that the picture does not represent the

commonplace beast that is his own,

but it is a discovery.

(Translated by the author from the original in Bengali)

Reprinted from Viswabharati Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3

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