"Mira Is Mad with Love," attributed to Mirabai

Mira Is Mad with Love


O friends, I am mad with love, and no one sees.
My mattress is thorns, is nails:
The Beloved spreads open his bedding elsewhere.
How can I sleep? Andonment scorches my heart.
Only those who have felt the knife can measure the
     wound's deepness.
Only the jeweler knows the nature of the lost jewel.
I have lost him—
Anguish takes me from door to door, but no doctor
     answers.
Mira calls her Lord: O Dark One, only you can heal
     this pain.


Source of the text - Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems.  Versions by Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2004, p. 38.  This poem was translated by Jane Hirshfield.

TJB: Ecstatic static. Mira’s sensual-ascetic love for Krishna bursts from her song in crisp sensual images. How can her God/Beloved be absent?