34. Ibid., 145.
35. Ṛtusaṃhāra, including the commentary of Maṇirāma, and Śṛṅgāratilaka, ed. Vasudev Laksman Sastri Pansikar, 4th ed. (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara Press, 1913), 3.
36. VSR 690, in Kosambi and Gokhale, Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa, 126.
37. Edward C. Dimock Jr. and Denise Levertov, trans., In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 45.
38. VSR 815, in Kosambi and Gokhale, Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa, 150.
39. Quoted in Johann Jakob Meyer, Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1930), 1:229.
40. Paul Keegan, ed., The New Penguin Book of English Verse (London: Penguin, 2001), 74.
41. BS 88, in Śatakatrayādi-subhāṣitasaṃgraḥ of Bhartṛhari, ed. D. D. Kosambi, Singhi Jain Series, no. 23 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1948), 35.
42. Dudley Fitts, trans., Poems from the Greek Anthology (New York: New Directions, 1938), 35.
43. BS 159, in Kosambi, Śatakatrayādi-subhāṣitasaṃgraḥ of Bhartṛhari, 62.
44. John Donne, “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed,” in John Donne’s Poetry, ed. Arthur L. Clements, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), 62.
45. Thera- and Therī-Gāthā: Stanzas Ascribed to Elders of the Buddhist Order of Recluses, ed. Hermann Oldenburg and Richard Pischel, Pāli Text Society, 2nd ed. (London: Luzac, 1966), 131.
46. Quoted in H. W. Schumann, The Historical Buddha, trans. M. O’C. Walshe (London: Arkana, 1989), 208.
47. Arthur Waley, trans., Translations from the Chinese (New York: Knopf, 1941), 83.
48. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1963), 117.
49. VSR 221, in Kosambi and Gokhale, Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa, 42.
50. William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” in Selected Poems, ed. John O. Hayden (London: Penguin, 1994), 68.
51. See Daniel H. H. Ingalls, “A Sanskrit Poetry of Village and Field: Yogeśvara and His Fellow Poets,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 74, no. 3 (July–September 1954): 119–31.
52. VSR 1699, in Kosambi and Gokhale, Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa, 293.
53. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Status of Indian Women,” in The Dance of Shiva: Fourteen Indian Essays, rev. ed. (New York: Noonday Press, 1956), 102.
54. Siegfried Lienhard, A History of Classical Poetry: Sanskrit, Pāli, Prākrit, A History of Indian Literature, vol. 3, fasc. 1, ed. Jan Gonda (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 189, n. 106.
55. BS 166, in Kosambi, Śatakatrayādi-subhāṣitasaṃgraḥ of Bhartṛhari, 65.
56. Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin, trans., The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (New York: New York Review Books, 2004), 69–70.
57. PN 235, in Puṟanāṉūṟu, comp. Peruntēvaṉār, ed. Auvai Cu. Turaicamippillai, 2 vols. (Tirunelveli: South India Saivasiddhanta Publishing Works Society, 1967–1972), 2:76.
58. RP 12.11, in Prabandhakoṣa of Rājaśekhara Sūri, ed., with a Hindi translation, by Jina Vijaya, Singhi Jain Series, no. 6 (Santiniketan, West Bengal: Adhisthata-Singhi Jaina Jnanapitha, 1935), 61.
59. D. S. Carne-Ross, Pindar (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 5–6.
ABHINANDA
THAT’S HOW I SAW HER
Hurriedly, she threw my silk cloth over her loins
and knotted her hair that had come loose
in the vigorous love play; her heavy breathing
showed my fingernail marks on her breasts.
That’s how I saw her, head lowered,
recalling her boldness, after we had made love.
AMARU
WHO NEEDS THE GODS?
With her tangled hair in disarray,
her earrings swinging wildly,
and sweat wiping off the mark on her forehead,
the lovely woman’s eyes droop
from the fatigue of riding her lover.
Long may her face protect you.
Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva—
who needs the gods now?
IN A HUNDRED PLACES
When my face turned to meet his,
I lowered my eyes and stared at my feet.
When my ears longed to hear him talk,
I kept them shut tight.
When my cheeks, damp with sweat, flushed red,
I covered them with my hands.
But what could I do, friends,
when the seams of my bodice
tore in a hundred places?
A TASTE OF AMBROSIA
She was startled when he bit her lower lip.
Shaking her finger at him, she yelled,
“Stop it! Let go of me, you rogue!”
Her anger rose to fever pitch:
her slender eyebrows danced
and her eyes rolled, as she drew her breath.
Whoever has kissed such a high-toned woman
has tasted ambrosia, for which
the foolish gods churned the ocean.
PINCERS
“The bed is rough and itchy, my love,
from the sandalwood powder
scattered by our tight embrace.”
He said this and made me sit on his chest,
and bit my lips hard in excitement.
The rogue even pulled my clothes off
with his toes, working them like pincers.
Later, he did just as he pleased with me.
THE BRIDE
With a trembling hand, she reaches for her clothes,
tosses the remains of her garland at the burning lamp;
coyly she smiles and covers her husband’s eyes
with her hands. Such is the ravishing sight
he comes upon every time they’ve made love.
ANON
LOVERS’ QUARREL
Miserable and unwilling to talk,
they lay on the bed, faces turned away;
though in their hearts they wished
to make it up, pride stood in the way.
Then, slowly, out of the corner of their eyes,
each caught a glimpse of the other.
The quarrel ended in a burst of laughter
as they turned around and hugged each other.
THE PLEDGE
He’s broken the pledge, banished me
from his heart where I held a special place.
No more in love, he now walks past me
like any other man. The days go by
as I keep thinking of this over and over again.
Dear friend, I don’t know why my heart
doesn’t break into a hundred pieces.
A LOVER’S WELCOME
She hung a broad festoon above the door—
with only her eyes, not with blue lotuses.
She gave away a bunch of flowers—
with only her smiles, not with jasmine and such.
She made a ritual offering—
with only the sweat trickling down her breasts,
not with water splashed from a jar.
And with only her body,
the lovely woman welcomed her lover into the house.
REGRET
“Fool! Why didn’t I caress my lord’s neck?
Why did I lower my face when he kissed me?
Why didn’t I look at him? Speak to him?”
The young wife, now seasoned in love’s delights,
regrets her naive ways as a new bride.
STONEHEARTED
On merely hearing his name,
a shiver runs through my body.
At the very sight of his face,
I break out in a sweat like a moonstone.
When my lover, who is dearer to me
than life itself, comes near and caresses
<
br /> my neck, I stop sulking, though at times
I am as stonehearted as ever.
FEIGNING SLEEP
Seeing that she was unattended in the bedroom,
the young wife rose slowly from the bed
and looked long at her husband’s face
as he feigned sleep. Boldly she kissed him
but noticing his flushed cheeks,
lowered her head in shame.
Her loved one then burst out laughing
and for long covered her face with kisses.
REMORSE
My face is etched in sorrow;
my heart’s uprooted; I am sleepless
and worn out weeping day and night
from not seeing my lover’s face;
my body’s wasted away.
Contrite, he had groveled at my feet,
yet I had spurned him.
Friends, were you looking out for me
when I exploded at him in anger?
WALKING THE STREET BY HER HOUSE
Just a glimpse of her blows his mind away
and he thinks of a ruse to make her acquaintance.
When passion reaches fever pitch,
he will have to approach a friend to help out.
Short of the pleasure of embracing his love,
even walking the street by her house
makes him delirious with joy.
THE SHEETS
Smudged here with betel juice, burnished there
with aloe paste, a splash of powder in one corner,
and lac from footprints painted in another,
with flowers from her hair strewn all over
its winding crumpled folds, the sheets celebrate
the woman’s pleasure of making love in every position.
A WOMAN WRONGED
No, she didn’t slam the door in his face
nor turn away from him.
Not a harsh word crossed her lips.
Her gaze unwavering, eyelashes still,
she looked at her husband
as though he were an ordinary man.
AUBADE
The fever of passion spent but nipples still erect
from her husband’s tight embrace,
the young woman at daybreak views her body
that had given him such pleasure,
and smiling to herself leaves the bedroom.
LIKE THE WHEELS OF A CHARIOT
I, Yamī, am overcome by love for Yama.
I long to sleep with him in the same bed,
to open my body as a wife would to her husband.
Like the wheels of a chariot, may we move as one.
THE WORD
One who looks does not see the word;
one who listens does not hear it.
As a wife in beautiful clothes
reveals her body to her husband,
so does the word reveal itself to you.
AN INVITATION
“Won’t you lie down for a while
in this thicket of reeds and bamboo trees
and look at this field here?”
Even as the girl herding cows
said this to the young traveler,
casually sitting by the roadside,
a shiver ran through her body.
THE TRAVELER
My husband’s away on business:
there’s been no word from him.
His mother left this morning for her son-in-law’s:
her daughter has had a child.
I’m alone and in the full bloom of youth.
How can I meet you tonight?
It is evening. Be on your way, traveler.
THE DEVOTED WIFE
It would be unlucky if I say, “Don’t go.”
“By all means go,” would be heartless.
“Stay beside me,” overbearing.
“Do as you please,” the height of indifference.
You may or may not believe me if I say,
“I won’t live without you.”
Teach me the right thing to say, my lord,
when you leave this world.
THE KINGDOM’S HAPPINESS
Though I conquer the whole world,
in truth, there is only one city;
in that city, only one house;
in that house, only one room;
in that room, only one bed;
in that bed, glowing like a jewel,
only one woman—
the source of the kingdom’s happiness.
HAIR
Once untied my woman’s hair tumbles down,
damp, filling the air with perfume,
only to be tied again before it clings to her loins,
burnt by the white flow of passion.
WILD NIGHTS
This much I know: I trembled like a vine
when he took me in his arms,
when he fondled my breasts and wouldn’t let go,
when he tossed aside the garland.
That’s all I remember, friend.
Of what happened next—the body going limp,
breath fluttering—I recall nothing.
THANK OFFERING
We leave our youth behind with each passing day:
fuck me always so long as you have the strength.
For once you’re dead, my love, who will offer you,
as you lie on a bed of kusa grass,
with sesame and water, a smooth shaven cunt?
AT THE CREMATION GROUND
A poor man hurries to the cremation ground
and pleads with a corpse: “Rise and carry
for just a moment, friend, this heavy burden of poverty
that I may enjoy forever your death-born happiness.”
But the corpse knew death was far better
than poverty and remains silent.
ON A RAINY DAY
Fortunate is the lover who helps his mistress
to change clothes when she comes over on a rainy day.
The kohl around her eyes is washed off by the rain,
and her sheer blue cloth, clinging to her shapely breasts,
reveals the natural beauty of her figure.
WHEN WINTER COMES
The rich are excited by the coming of winter:
with mouths full of fresh betel nut,
their bodies feast on endless joys
as they lie fondling their dark women.
But we who are poor are desperate—
our laps, barely covered by worn-out rags—
collect no bounty but the quaking of our knees.
JEWELS
The cloth around her hips slipped
as the fire of love ran its course.
The warm vibrant jewels of her girdle
seemed to drape her in a rustle of silk.
While her lover despaired of ever seeing her
in all her glory, the lovely girl blushed
in vain with embarrassment.
But when he tried to pull her veil off,
she stopped him, although she didn’t
quite manage to hide her nakedness.
THE CREAKING BED
The night was far gone;
the lamp burned with a steady flame.
But my lover knew a thing or two
about the rites of passion.
He made love slowly, cautiously,
was forced to hold back his body
as the bed creaked like an enemy,
grinding his teeth in rage.
SHE PROTESTS TOO MUCH
“Girl, you be the lover, I’ll be the loved one.”
“No, never,” she protested, shaking her head.
But she let the bracelet slip from her wrist
to mine and gave in without a word.
SHE DOESN’T LET GO OF HER PRIDE
She turns aside his eyes,
riveted on her breasts,
by embracing him.
She puts rouge on her lips,
seeing his lips burn for her
s.
She stops his hand on her crotch
by closing her thighs tight.
Tactfully, she neither rejects
her husband’s love
nor lets go of her pride.
THE WAYS OF LOVE
With a curse, the woman threw her lover out,
despite his groveling at her feet.
But when he began to walk out of the room,
she ran to stop him, with head bowed
and the knot of her skirt in her palms.
Strange are the ways of love.
A LOVER’S WORD
No, my husband isn’t stupid.
Though the moon is shining and the way rough,
and everyone’s fond of gossip,
a lover’s word may not be broken.
So with love on her mind, a certain girl
sets out to keep her tryst:
many times she leaves her house,
and as many times she returns.
THE HAWK
Undisturbed a hawk circles freely high above
till he hangs perfectly still in midair.
Looking down, he spies a chunk of meat
cooking in the backyard of an outcaste’s hut.
He draws in the full span of his moving wings
for the swift descent, and in an instant snatches
the half-cooked meat from the pot.
A NEEDLE
Worn down by hunger, the children are like corpses;
relatives have forsaken me;
Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit Page 5
