Part 7 (1/2)

Know that I am a woman, and bear with me when you find me wanting.

For I have thought and thought and know for certain that all that is left for me in this world is your love, and if I lose you for a moment I die.

Chandidas says, ”Be tender to her who is yours in life and death.”

5

”Fruit to sell, Fruit to sell,” cried the woman at the door.

The Child came out of the house.

”Give me some fruit,” said he, putting a handful of rice in her basket.

The fruit-seller gazed at his face and her eyes swam with tears.

”Who is the fortunate mother,” she cried, ”that has clasped you in her arms and fed you at her breast, and whom your dear voice called 'Mother'?”

”Offer your fruit to him,” says the poet, ”and with it your life.”

II

1

Endlessly varied art thou in the exuberant world, Lady of Manifold Magnificence. Thy path is strewn with lights, thy touch thrills into flowers; that trailing skirt of thine sweeps the whirl of a dance among the stars, and thy many-toned music is echoed from innumerable worlds through signs and colours.

Single and alone in the unfathomed stillness of the soul, art thou, Lady of Silence and Solitude, a vision thrilled with light, a lonely lotus blossoming on the stem of love.

2

Behind the rusty iron gratings of the opposite window sits a girl, dark and plain of face, like a boat stranded on a sand-bank when the river is shallow in the summer.

I come back to my room after my day's work, and my tired eyes are lured to her.

She seems to me like a lake with its dark lonely waters edged by moonlight.

She has only her window for freedom: there the morning light meets her musings, and through it her dark eyes like lost stars travel back to their sky.

3