In your temple the poet's composition
Lights the incense of rhythm
Out of that magic vapour
Emerged the form of your spirit.
You thus received, Woman, a body beyond the body
Which is like a rainbow beyond all reach
Colourful in its rays,
You received the trickle of the deathless messsage
From the broken nectar-chalice.
Desire drives you away far beyond
The limits of desire,
Creating your seat far away
It deceives only itself.
With dream-lines it etches the image of trance
And hides it behind an exquisite veil,
Making it unfamiliar,
It refuses to denude her
Lest the dream gets shattered.
Bedecked as that statue is
With gifts of an admiring heart,
It is filled with the very life-beat
From the warmth of my life-breath.
I wonder what a power prevailed in between
To appear with the heat of a mystic fire
And found the philosopher's stone,
I wonder how in her eyes reverberate
Echoes of a magic speech.
She returned to the poet a greater gift
That the gift she had received,
In secret she played the melancholic melody
On the deep strings of the veena.
Wear the flower-garland from the beloved hand,
Cover the neck of your lover once more
With the garland you received from him,
You surrender yourself worthy
Of the worth of your lord.
[ Bithika, "Avenue", 1933]