Fruit-Gathering

Fruit-Gathering is a powerful collection of prose poems by a master of Indian literature. "Bid me and I shall gather my fruits to bring them in full baskets into your courtyard, though some are lost and some not ripe. For the season grows heavy with its fullness, and there is a plaintive shepherd's pipe, in the shade. Bid me and I shall set sail on the river." In these poems of love, nature, faith, and dreams, Tagore is at the height of his creative powers. In one passage, he is a lovesick youth, in another, an illiterate man with a letter he cannot read. He longs to be a poet of the night, a singer of "fathomless silence." Filled with visions of saints and kings, celebrations of beauty, and powerful evocations of the natural world, Fruit-Gathering is one of his most original works.