A POET”S PRAYER
WHEN the heart is hard and parched up,
Come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life, come
with
a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its
din
on all sides shutting me out from
beyond,
come to me, my lord of silence,
with thy
peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched,
shut up in a corner, break open
the door,
my king, and come with the
ceremony of
a king.
When desire blinds the mind with
delusion and dust, O thou holy
one, thou
wakeful, come with thy light and
thy thunder.
The
author of this lovely prayer is the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 –
7 August 1941), It is taken from his ‘soothing garland of verses’ called “Gitanjali”
which won him Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
Tagore
often addresses God as his king. In the short prayer which is given above, the
poet is in an unbalanced condition. His heart has become dry and parched up and
the remedy for this is a dose of mercy without which the heart is devoid of delicate
feelings. The tumultuous work which
raises a lot of din and shuts up the poet from the silent gates of heaven is
unbearable, so he prays to his God of silence, to come with his peace and rest
and fill the space with tranquillity.
The
poet treats himself as a beggar who depends on the bounty of his Lord, the
king. Whenever his heart becomes poor and he sits crouched up in a corner, he
appeals to him to come with the ceremony
of a king and enrich him with the specific treasure that befits a pious and
generous heart.
The poet is not in favour of cherishing
unholy desires that blind the mind with
dust and delusion. At such a time, he wants God , the Holy One, to come with
light and thunder and shake him up so that he wakes up and does not entertain the
unholy desires.
This short prayer is almost a perfect prayer.
Though Tagore wrote it and is the supplicating voice of his own heart, it may be considered as the payer of
every sane and pious heart in the world.
**********
17th August 2022 ,, G.
R. KANWAL
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