Autumn (ਪੱਤਝੜ) is the poem which was originally written in Punjabi language and is published on my Poetry Blog. This translation is for all of you who can not read in Punjabi. Also, if you have read the original poem in Punjabi, please share your views on the extent to which this translation is able to convey the original idea.

Golden is this evening,

leaves are falling,

one by one.

Slowly and silently,

in my remembrance,

a face has come.

On this evening,

memories deep within,

start to burn.

The yesterday of mine,

becomes my present,

this is autumn.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941) was a Bengali poet, novelist, educator, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was awarded the knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators protesting colonial laws.

Tagore’s reputation in the West as a mystic has perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic of colonialism.

Here are two of the greatest poems of Tagore…

1. Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

2. Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age-old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was not only a great scientist but also a spiritually evolved human being. His thoughts reflect his deep understanding of the world, science and God. Being a scientist, he never questioned the existence of God. Probably, for the first time in history of mankind, he advocated the co-existence of Science and Spirituality.

Here are some nice quotes by Albert Einstein :

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. 

Thanks,

Sidhu