Distant, fragile, pale blue of sky
above the forest trees lifting
their arms, a silent offering of green.
Winter's tender sun on earth
spreads a shawl of clear light.
I am writing this down before
the painter, indifferent, wipes clean the canvas.

A coworker recently gave me a quote by Rabindranath Tagore for a list I keep. This was the first I'd heard of this giant of a human being. To think I might have gone through life without knowing there was such a person! I happened on this slim volume of poems in my local library and instantly put it in my stack.

There are two decent introductions which give some background (necessary as these poems were written in his last years and apparently represent a certain break from his previous work - both in philosophy and form). Then there are 39 free verse poems focused tightly on the interplay of life and death and the poet's mortality. Someone else said they were overwrought; I found them almost spartan and utterly beautiful. I am reminded some of Hopkins. These are followed by notes from the translator on individual poems, which are also nice to have.

My complaint, such as it is, is with the translators. I really don't understand why they didn't translate all of the poems (as there are apparently around 100) and simply present them in chronological order instead of following the first Bengali publications. I have no idea if the rest are available in English, and it would have been wonderful to have the whole collection from this time frame. So I'm off to look for the rest, I guess.

(Edited 6/25/15 to clean up issues with writing reviews by phone.) ( )