Confession, the day of reckoning
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
करूं कवि काय आतां नाही लाज । मज भक्तराज हांसतील ॥1॥
आतां आला एका निवाडएाचा दिस । सत्याविण रस विरसला ॥ध्रु.॥
अनुभवाविण कोण करी पाप । रिते चि संकल्प लाजलावे ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे आतां न धरवे धीर । नव्हे जीव िस्थर माझा मज ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
What poetry can I compose now? I have lost all shame. The great devotees will laugh at me. The day of reckoning has arrived; without truth, all flavor has turned sour. Who commits sin without experience? Empty resolutions should be ashamed of themselves. Says Tuka, I can no longer hold my patience; my own jiva is not steady within me.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
What poetry can I make now? I have no shame left. The great devotees will laugh at me. The day of reckoning has come; without truth, all the sweetness has gone flat. Who commits sin without having tasted it? Empty resolutions should be ashamed of themselves. Tuka says: I can hold my patience no longer; my own life is not steady within me.
What it means
This is Tukaram turning the knife on himself. He doubts his own verses and fears the laughter of true devotees, because a day of reckoning has arrived where anything not grounded in truth has lost its savor. He confesses that hollow resolutions, vows made without real experience behind them, deserve shame, and he counts himself among those exposed. The verse points inward, at the gap between what one declares and what one has actually lived, and ends in raw unsteadiness: his patience is spent and his own life will not sit still within him.
Confession and Sin
Raw, unflinching accounts of personal failure, weakness, and the weight of sin.
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