Readings from Tagore and Neruda
Tagore joyously sings about the inevitable but tender relationship of death with life. God finds himself by creating (46) The infant flower opens its bud and cries, "Dear World, please do not fade." (66) The night kisses the fading day whispering to his ear, "I am death, your mother. I am to give you fresh birth." (119) Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down. (268) (Stray Birds by Rabindranath Tagore. Translated from Bengali to English by the author, The Macmillan Company, 1916) Neruda's imagination transports an ordinary bed from a resting place of the newborn, the sick, the dead, to a bed of lovers and dreamers. His vision depicts the surface of a sea -- "the intimidating bed" -- which...
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