Poem of the Day » mirabai

The Rainy Season

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:26:08 +0000

The rainy season is abroad
And the skirt of my dress is wet.
You have gone off to distant lands,
And my heart finds it unbearable.
I keep sending letters to my Beloved
Asking when He will return.
Mira’s Lord is the courtly Giridhara:
O Krishna, O Brother of Balram,
Grant me thy sight.

- Mirabai

Nothing is Really Mine – Mirabai

Tejvan Pettinger — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:54:14 +0000

Nothing is really mine except Krishna.
O my parents, I have searched the world
And found nothing worthy of love.
Hence I am a stranger amidst my kinfolk
And an exile from their company,
Since I seek the companionship of holy men;
There alone do I feel happy,
In the world I only weep.

I planted the creeper of love
And silently watered it with my tears;
Now it has grown and overspread my dwelling.
You offered me a cup of poison
Which I drank with joy.
Mira is absorbed in contemplation of Krishna,
She is with God and all is well!

- Mirabai

The Plums Tasted – Mirabai

Tejvan Pettinger — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:21:26 +0000

The plums tasted
sweet to the unlettered desert-tribe girl-
but what manners! To chew into each!

She was ungainly, low-caste, ill mannered and dirty,
but the god took the fruit she’d been sucking.

Why? She knew how to love.
She might not distinguish
splendour from filth
but she’d tasted the nectar of passion.

Might not know any Veda,
but a chariot swept her away-
now she frolics in heaven, ecstatically bound
to her god.

The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira,
will save anyone who can practice rapture like that-
I myself in a previous birth
was a cow herding girl
at Gokul.

Mirabai