Tradition and verse — not medical advice

Playthings

Rabindranath Tagore, The Crescent Moon (1913, Macmillan and Company). Public domain.

Shown in author's own English -- not a translation we made.

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.

I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.

I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.

Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!"

Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies.

I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver.

With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain.

In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.

In plain words (ours, not the poet's): a parent watching their child play happily with a stick realizes that grown-up busyness with money and things is really its own kind of game too.

Why public domain: Tagore wrote The Crescent Moon in English himself, first published London 1913. US: pre-1929 publication, public domain in the US. Tagore died 1941; public domain in India (life + 60 years) since 2002.

Read the original in full

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