Friday September 27, 2013
Hard times — a Congress locked in venom and contempt for those with whom one must negotiate, “partisan” is a common adjective for elected officials at the national level; Detroit city caught in uncertainties about bankruptcy that stir mistrust and fear for the future; UDM negotiating a McNichols faculty contract turned acrimonious and hurtful.
Today’s prayer poem Rabindranath Tagore Poem # 1 Gitanjali
Tagore died in the city of his birth, Calcutta, in 1941. He vastly influenced poetry, sacred and secular, not only in India but around the world. He is the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. If you buy Gitanjali, a book of 100 short sacred poems, prepare yourself to only read one poem at a time so you can sit with it. Here is # 1. These poems have no titles, only numbers.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,
and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,
and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart
loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest,
and still there is room to fill.