A Cowherding girl

By Mirabai Mirabai

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 knew how to love.

She might not distinquish

splendor 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, esctatically bound

to her god.

The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira,

will save anyone

who can practice rapture like that-

I myself in a previous birth

was a cowherding girl

at Gokul.