These are modern English translations of poems by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who has been called the "Bard of Bengal" and "the Bengali Shelley." In 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore was also a notable artist, musician and polymath.

The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

These days it is wise
to be learned, certified and appointed.
You can be safe

hammering your thought.
Speak or do not. The day enrolls.
Academics, Seminarians,

professional theoreticians,
and a pack of barking dogs. You
become one, quarrelsome

who seldom bites.