the cowherding girl
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’d known 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 Meera,
will save anyone
who can practice rapture like that-
I myself in a previous birth
at Gokul.
Mirabai
20" x 6.5” x 5”
2017, series of 20, 18 lbs
© 2017 nistal prem de boer