Description
Part dance, part chant, O My Friends What Can You Tell Me Of Love, is a setting of 16th-century Indian’s beloved Hindu mystic poet and saint, Mirabai’s, devotion to Lord Krishna. A Rajput princess, Mira would escape the castle at night and join other Krishna devotees in town.
Persecuted by her in-laws for her beliefs, she eventually left her home to set out on a pilgrimage, dancing from one Indian village to another. Her devotion to Lord Krishna is extolled in the many bhajans, or sacred poems, attributed to her. Mira is still popular throughout India, where millions have memorized her poems, and her poetry has been translated and published worldwide.
Text
O My Friends,
What can you tell me of Love,
Whose pathways are filled with strangeness?
When you offer the Great One your love,
At the first step your body is crushed.
Next be ready to offer your head as his seat.
Be ready to orbit his lamp like a moth giving in to the light,
To live in the deer as she runs toward the hunter’s call,
In the partridge that swallows hot coals for love of the moon, In the fish that, kept from the sea, happily dies.
Like a bee trapped for life in the closing of the sweet flower, Mira has offered herself to her Lord.
She says, the single Lotus will swallow you whole.
Mirabai, Translated by Jane Hirshfield © 2004
from “Women in Praise of the Sacred”
Used with Permission
Program Notes
Composer Note: Mirabai is well known and revered throughout India. Similar to a nun, Mira, a follower of Krishna, referred to in the poem as her Dark Lord because of his blue color, is willing to give up all her worldly possessions and her position in society. A Rajput princess, she gave up her clothes, her jewelry, and her status to sneak out of the castle and meet up with an untouchable, the lowest of all the castes, who was her teacher. When they met, she would wash his feet.
I admire Mira’s passion, her rebellion against societal norms and the way she chooses to be herself, and thus, allowing others to do the same.
Mira addresses her followers as friends. It is an invitation to listen. In this poem, Mira, similar to saints and mystics who have come before and after her, is elaborating on her devotion — saying she is willing to suffer anything for her beliefs.
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