Part
Seven: Cunning Krishna
To light the mazy paths that unchaste women
take across the wood of Brindavan,
there swells the eastern moon: a saffron
mark
like spot disfiguring some beauty's face.
Mádhava is lonely.
She laments.
A hare-marked disk of light hangs low.
Thirteenth Song
She
says: no meeting Hari in the wood:
in vain the radiant figure of my youth.
What refuge is there when a friend deceives?
In dark frequenting of that wood
was where
unequally love's arrow caught my heart.
What refuge is there when
a friend deceives?
Shamed and useless, it is better death
than burn continually
as one apart.
What refuge is there when a friend deceives?
I am alone this
ardent, sweet spring night
while she, more merited, with Hari sports.
What
refuge is there when a friend deceives?
My jewelled ornaments in glints convey
too well the fires of Hari fled from me.
What refuge is there when a friend deceives?
Though delicate my body, as a flower,
barbed, the flowers hung there hurt
the heart.
What refuge is there when a friend deceives?
I linger in the
innumerable thick reeds,
that he for all his thinking never sees.
What refuge
is there when a friend deceives?
May words of Jayadeva fall at Krishna's feet
as skilful woman will enchant the heart.
What refuge is there when a friend
deceives?
* * *
My love is somewhere wantoning or held
by relatives
or lost his way, his mind
confused, the forest dark, to nowhere find
the
pleasing arbour of that thicket place?
Returned without her Mádhava,
the friend
so tongue-tied and dejected, Rádhá knew
he sported fecklessly with
someone else.
As though there seeing him, now Radha said:
Fourteenth Song
Bedecked as courtesan, the hair is shaken
in love's long tournament
where stems are broken.
Krishna's garland is some other girl.
In shimmering
necklaces above each breast,
by Hari stirred and changed in each embrace.
Krishna's garland is some other girl.
Around her moon-like face waves clouded
hair
as there, exhausted, of his lips she drinks.
Krishna's garland is some
other girl.
To and fro his earrings strike her cheeks,
and then the stirrings
of her girdle zone.
Krishna's garland is some other girl.
She laughs,
is bashful at lover's looks,
and then what murmuring and long she makes.
Krishna's garland is some other girl.
Broken, bristling, trembling sighs she
sheds
who has the love god under shuttered lids.
Krishna's garland is some
other girl.
The body fortunate and dewed in sweat,
that chest in joy she
rests on after fight.
Krishna's garland is some other girl.
May, pleasing
Hari, Jayadeva's words
destroy the darkness of the Kali age.
* * *
The
moon-pale splendour of the lotus face
of Mura's enemy may stop my pain.
To one left solitary, the moon, alas,
must light for lovers what they too must
miss.
Fifteenth Song
The face in rapture for a kiss he marks
with musk as antelope attend the moon.
On sandy
Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling now.
A
flower he places in the tumbling hair,
is fast as deer or lightning to her mouth.
On sandy Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling now.
He hangs a pendant on her musky breasts
that shine resplendent as the deer-marked
moon.
On sandy Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling
now.
Her arm he subdues with an emerald clasp
as bees cool-clustered on
a lotus shoot.
On sandy Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna
revelling now.
Around the golden house of love, the hips,
he hangs a laughing
girdle arch of gems.
On sandy Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is
Krishna revelling now.
The feet that touch his heart he paints with lac
as garment covering love's inner house.
On sandy Yamuná's thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling now.
He's mesmerized by beauty's eyes, while
I—
say why, my friend—reside in sapless shoots.
On sandy Yamuná's
thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling now.
Jayadeva echoes
Hari's best
that age's discords end at Krishna's feet.
On sandy Yamuná's
thick-wooded shore
triumphantly is Krishna revelling now.
* * *
He's
false and hurts my messenger. He has
too many loves, my friend: he will not come.
Yet I am drawn to think on him and burst
with longing that my soul would go with
him.
Sixteenth Song
His eyes are round her like the wind-tossed
lotus:
a palliasse of leaves will never scorch her
when she is pleasuring
one forest-wreathed.
His mouth voluptuous as open lotus,
her blossoms will not break with love-god's arrows
when she is pleasuring one
forest-wreathed.
With words so ever-living, sweet and
soft
she will not blaze up in Malaya breezes
when she is pleasuring
one forest-wreathed.
Like the land-borne lotus on her are his hands
and
feet: the cool of moonbeams will not hurt
when she is pleasuring one forest-wreathed.
Coalescing,
radiant as the clouds,
no separation there can cleave the heart
when
she is pleasuring one forest-wreathed.
His clothing leaves the touchstone gold:
she pays no heed to how her servants sigh
when she is pleasuring one forest-wreathed.
This
youth is better than a world of people,
despite the pain and pity and the sorrow
when she is pleasuring one forest-wreathed.
May Jayadeva's singing words so
give
my friend, this Hari entrance to your heart
when she is pleasuring one
forest-wreathed.
* * *
The Sandal winds delight and fill my mind,
but move so variously in love or spite:
The life-breath of the world you bring
me for
a moment, then as Mádhava you're gone.
My friends deceive
me, the chill wind is fire,
the sweet light venom, and a scourge my mind:
though forcibly the heart is drawn to hardness,
auspicious looks and I am loving
mad.
Afflict me, Sandal wind, with love's five arrows,
take my life-breath
back, I have no home.
My sister-death, the Yamuná, relieve
this conflagration
in your cooling waves.