The first day's sun
 questioned
 the new appearance of being –
 Who are you?
 There was no answer.

 Years went by.
 Day's last sun
 asked the last question from the shores of the west
 in the soundless evening –
 Who are you?
 There was no answer.

(July 27, 1941 morning)

Rabindranath Tagore wrote until the end which came for him on August 7, 1941. This poem is from Final Poems recently published. They are translated from the Bengali jointly by Wendy Barker Saranindranath Tagore, a great grandson the venerable Tagore. Difficult for English speakers to know, the pronunciation is Rab-IN-druh-nath rather than Rab-in-DRA-nuth.

For me, this poem catches the unanswered question of existence from the Hindu point of view: “There was no answer.” I find this profoundly sad. I am thankful for the courage of a sick old man gazing at his last sunsets who penned these stark and simple words from the heart of another tradition. As Keats said about Tagore, he gives us another way to see.

According to the authors of Final Poems, this poem is the most famous of Tagore’s later poems in the Bengali language. They point out its similarity to the Creation Hymn of the Vig Reda (c. 2000 BCE). This hymn begins with the unforgettable line, “There was neither nonexistence nor existence then.” It ends with these lines:

Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is its creation? The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.

There is a good short bio with the first Tagore poem in the WonderingMinstrels collection, “Where the Mind Without Fear” (Poem #177).

— Daniel