MIRABAI


Strange Is The Path When You Offer Love

Do not mention the name of love,

O my simple-minded companion.

Strange is the path

When you offer your love.

Your body is crushed at the first step.

If you want to offer love

Be prepared to cut off your head

And sit on it.

Be like the moth,

Which circles the lamp and offers its body.

Be like the deer, which, on hearing the horn,

Offers its head to the hunter.

Be like the partridge,

Which swallows burning coals

In love of the moon.

Be like the fish

Which yields up its life

When separated from the sea.

Be like the bee,

Entrapped in the closing petals of the lotus.

Mira's lord is the courtly Giridhara.

She says: Offer your mind

To those lotus feet.


Sleep

Sleep has not visited me the whole night,

Will the dawn ever come?

O my companion,

Once I awoke with a start from a dream.

Now the remembrance from that vision

Never fades.

My life is ebbing as I choke and sigh,

When will the Lord of the Afflicted come

I have lost my senses and gone mad,

But the Lord knows my secret.

He who deals out life and death

Knows the secret of Mira's pain.


I am mad with Love

I am mad with love

And no one understands my plight.

Only the wounded

Understand the agonies of the wounded,

When the fire rages in the heart.

Only the jeweller knows the value of the jewel,

Not the one who lets it go.

In pain I wander from door to door,

But could not find a doctor.

Says Mira: Harken, my Master,

Mira's pain will subside

When Shyam comes as the doctor.


Come To My Pavilion

Come to my pavilion, O my King.

I have spread a bedmade of

delicately selected buds and blossoms,

And have arrayed myself in bridal garb

From head to toe.

I have been Thy slave during many births,

Thou art the be-all of my existence.

Mira's Lord is Hari, the Indestructible.

Come, grant me Thy sight at once.


Do not leave me alone

Do not leave me alone, a helpless woman.

My strength, my crown,

I am empty of virtues,

You, the ocean of them.

My heart’s music, you help me

In my world-crossing.

You protected the king of the elephants.

You dissolve the fear of the terrified.

Where can I go? Save my honour

For I have dedicated myself to you

And now there is no one else for me.

I Do Not care about Social Norms

I will fasten the bells of his love to my feet

And dance in front of Girdhar.

Dancing and dancing I will please his eyes;

My love is an ancient one.

My love is the only truth.

I do not care about social norms

Nor do I keep my family’s honour.

I cannot forget, even for a moment,

The beauty of my lover.

I am dyed in Hari’s colour.

That Dark Dweller

That dark Dweller in Braj

Is my only refuge.

O my companion,

Worldly comfort is an illusion,

As soon you get it, it goes.

I have chosen the Indestructible for my refuge,

Him whom the snake of death

Will not devour.

My Beloved dwells in my heart,

I have actually seen that Abode of Joy.

Mira’s Lord is Hari, the Indestructible.

My Lord, I have taken refuge with Thee,

Thy slave.

O friends

O friends, I am mad

with love, and no one sees.

My mattress is a sword-point,

how can I sleep

when the bed of my Beloved

is spread open elsewhere?

Only those who have felt the knife

can understand the wound,

only the jeweler

knows the nature of the Jewel.

I have lost it,

and though anguish takes me door to door

no doctor answers.

Mira calls her Lord: O Dark One,

Only You can heal this pain.