Journey Home

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

 

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my

voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

 

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,

and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

 

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,

and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

 

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said ‘Here art thou!’

 

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand

streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’

 

– Rabindranath Tagore, from “Gitanjali” (“Song Offerings”), translated by the author from Bengali