Longing, the worn pilgrim at the feet
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
बहुक्षीदक्षीण । आलों सोसुनियां वन ॥1॥
विठोबा विसांवया विसांवया । पडों देई पायां ॥ध्रु.॥
बहुतां काकुलती । आलों सोसिली फजिती ॥2॥
केली तुजसाटीं । तुका ह्मणे येवढी आटी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
I have come exhausted, worn thin through many wastes, having endured the wilderness. O Vithoba, rest, rest. Let me fall at Your feet. I have come with desperate supplication, having endured humiliation after humiliation. Says Tuka, all this grinding toil I have borne only for Your sake.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
I have come worn thin, exhausted, having endured the wilderness. O Vithoba, rest, rest. Let me fall at your feet. I have come with desperate pleading, having borne humiliation after humiliation. Tuka says: all this grinding labor I have carried, and I carried it only for your sake.
What it means
Tukaram arrives at God like a traveler at the end of a hard road and asks for one thing: to lay himself down at Vithoba's feet. He does not hide the cost of the journey, naming the exhaustion, the wilderness, the repeated humiliation he has swallowed to get here. The word he uses for the feet is rest itself, the place where the toil finally stops. The whole poem turns on the last line: every bit of that suffering was endured for God's sake, and so it has a single destination.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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