Poetry Friday: Light By Tagore

Yesterday I sent my editor Françoise Bui of Delacorte a close-to-the-end revision of Secret Keeper (Random House, January 2009), so today I offer a brief excerpt of the draft that includes a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal's Nobel Laureate.

The scene is set on a train, and Asha's mother is telling her daughters about how she met their father:
"We were visiting relatives in Calcutta,” Ma started, keeping her eyes fixed on the blur of rice paddies outside. “One afternoon, I was on the veranda combing out my hair. It was long then, down to my knees, and thick as a shawl. I was singing; I remember the song still, it was a Tagore love song I’d learned only weeks before.”

She began to hum, and then sing in her low, rich voice: “Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light! Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth …”
The poem “Light” is reprinted from Gitanjali: Song Offerings by Rabindranath Tagore. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912.