Longing, every power spent
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कांहीं च न लगे आदि अवसान । बहुत कठीण दिसतसां ॥1॥
अवघ्याच माझ्या वेचविल्या शक्ती । न चलेसी युक्ति जाली पुढें ॥ध्रु.॥
बोलिलें वचन हारपलें नभीं । उतरलों तों उभीं आहों तैसीं ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे कांहीं न करावेंसें जालें । थकित चि ठेलें वित्त उगें ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Nothing seems to matter, neither beginning nor end. You appear most unyielding. I have spent all my powers, and no strategy avails me any longer. My spoken words have vanished into the sky; I remain standing just where I started. Says Tuka, nothing more can be done. The mind sits stunned and silent.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Nothing holds, neither beginning nor end. You look very hard to me. I have spent all my powers, and now no scheme works any longer. The words I spoke have vanished into the sky; I am left standing just where I began. Tuka says: there is nothing left to do. The mind sits stunned, and the wealth in it goes still.
What it means
Tukaram describes the exhaustion of a soul that has tried everything to reach God and failed. He can find no foothold, beginning or end, and God seems immovably hard. Every effort, every clever approach, is used up; his prayers seem to dissolve into empty sky, leaving him exactly where he started. The poem ends not in triumph but in stunned silence, all striving spent. This emptied-out helplessness is itself the honest ground of longing, the place where the seeker has nothing left but the waiting.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
More in this theme →