#wendy barker

[majestativa]

This maya, shaded in light, in darkness— the bodiless becomes material.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl. by Wendy Barker & Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[aemperatrix]

Wendy Barker

[majestativa]

Silent pain of emptiness fills this loveless room.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[majestativa]

To find pain’s limits— on a fevered, unnamed pilgrimage, together, from path to path, penetrating caves of fire, to find care’s origins, provisions of unending love.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[majestativa]

Wandering through the pyres of death, Chinnamasta, severed head in her hand, shatters human dreams in an instant, swallows her own blood in a hundred streams. When this hideous cosmic play concludes in a horror-filled frenzied dance, this evil age will end.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[majestativa]

And there you are, knitting, beside me— bending to the calm of creation.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[majestativa]

The tiny human body— infinite, its power to face pain. In the assembly of creation and annihilation.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)

[majestativa]

One day, I saw, in an ashen moment of dusk, death’s right hand entangling life’s throat tied with offered threads of blood; I recognized you both. I saw the wedding gift: the groom’s final offering to the bride, streaming from the right hand to the end of age.

— Rabindranath Tagore, Final Poems, transl by Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, (2001)