39. Poem: To Bloom [Phool Fotano in Bengali by Rabindranathnath Tagore from his book ‘Kheya’ (Ferry) (1906-1907 period)].
[Translator’s note: However much man may try to emulate God in creating beautiful things, his creations can never match God’s. The seemingly simplest entity in God’s animate world (and even the inanimate one)), is an object of wonder, a flower being exemplary thereof which manifests from God’s meditation for it over ages. The pragmatists may try to explain this phenomenon by Darwin’s ‘theory of evolution’ or like dogmas to gauge this unfathomable mystery of creation, yet, at the back of their mind they know
..The path of Thy creation
There may never be dearth of braggarts to beguile themselves with the belief that man has caught up with God, if not for anything else, but at least for his ability to-day to ‘clone’ even a human being, what to speak of a lamb or flower! This complacence notwithstanding, the fact is, the great feat of ‘cloning’ wholly stands on the biological base evolved by God over eternity, which man can never brush aside to start from the scratch. Man is simply a captive to the Arcanum of God’s creative process, being its infinitesimal bye product, thus ever incapable to perceive the whole of it, though often with height of audacity that he is God’s peer, maybe to His amusement. So, all brilliance of man notwithstanding, in whichever field, the poet’s ‘no confidence’ in man, as this poem depicts, is hardly belied.
Bloom you can’t,
None of you
Verbose however,
Despite all endeavor,
All your flaunt,
Passions day and night
And strokes at the stalk
With all your might,
None, with all your power
Can bloom a flower.
With your relentless sight
Its tenderness you may blight,
Its bunches you may tear apart
In dust to smart.
Amidst your babel
If its lips will reveal
Its hue and fragrance
Will not radiate thence.
So, by no means oh man,
Flowering a bud you can.
But, He who can bloom
Does as His boon
Only opens His eyes
And, as their ray lies
On the bud there,
Spells of animation bare;
So, He who can bloom,
Of His own can groom
The flower tender
With all its wonder.
At His breath, in an instant,
The flower does bend,
Poised for a flight
Stretching its wings light
Of the leaves
As the wind heaves.
With dcor of many a hue
Pining for a passionate clue
How one to entice
Spread its fragrance nice.
He who can bloom a flower,
At ease graces the bower.
