A MIRA COMPOSITION 1. That dark dweller - the blue boy – the flute bearer on the banks of Yamuna in Braj Is my only refuge – my solace. O my companion, Worldly comfort is an illusion, These wither away no sooner than one gets I have chosen the indestructible – the imperishable as my refuge –my sojourn-Him who vanishes all fear of death Also none of these will ever devour me not. My beloved dwells in my heart all day long, I have actually seen that abode of joy and bliss. Mira's lord is Hari, the indestructible. My lord, I have taken refuge with Thee, 2. He alone knows the bitterness of love Who has deeply felt its pangs. When you are in trouble No one comes near you But when fortune smiles. All come to share the joy. Love shows no external wound. But the pain pervades every pore Devotee Mira offers her body As a sacrifice to Giridhara for ever. 3. With tears overflowing profusely, I nourished the creeper of love that I planted once; Now the creeper has grown and spread all over, Also now it borne the fruit of bliss. The churner of the milk churned with great love and benign care. When I took the butter out thus, no need to drink buttermilk now. I came as the embodiment of love to manifest devotion; seeing the world, I wept. Mira has that rare single pointed purity of devotion to Shyam. This vision later led her to wander through all the 68 places of pilgrimage, to stumble and falter, to wear the yellow rags of a yogini, and yet still be utterly single-minded in pursing the consummation of this vision of Krishna. Many poems recall Mira’s wanderings through the forests. She slept on the forest floors, seeking only the company of Shyam, and as a wife would reach out to touch her husband, Mira reached out only to find emptiness. Perhaps the poems capture the driven desire of a physical need to love and be loved, as any faithful woman needs and wants. Perhaps the poems reveal the limits of desire and understanding of the Divine. But Mira, no Brahmin, no guru, knows she has chased
Shyam from birth to birth, through countless wombs. Still, she desires this divine touch. Sometimes the touch of rain on her clothing and skin is for her the touch of the Lord. When atma has seen paramatma, no earthly passion or desire can slake the soul’s thirst. Although Mira was in the body, her soul was ardently seeking Shyam. Her intellect and discrimination were seeking only paramatma, whom she once described as ‘slipping through the courtyard’ as she slept. That land ‘seems’ to be a physical place, a region called Mathura or Dwakara; yet Mira seeks that which cannot be had in the nights of wasted sleep, tossing, turning, desiring her lord, reaching out for one who is not there:
Another night without sleep, thrashing about until daybreak. Friend, once I rose from a luminous dream, a vision that nothing dispels.