Young Yasodhara was happy in
the company of Queen Amrtamati,
whose looks were the very glass wherein
he dressed himself, and touched his features.
But things soon began to take
a new turn in the young prince’s life.
Once, as it happened,
the king discharged his court duties
before time, and by the end
of day, went up the staircase
to the bed-chamber
to meet his beloved queen.
From the casements
rose a tiny column of
incense smoke like the grey-
winged dove that flew out, as if
at the behest of the love-god Mara,
to carry his message to
the minds of people.
Bees came hovering
round for the scent, and
the brush of their wings raised
the musk and camphor dust.
The blue sapphires
adorning the chamber
burned and glowed.
The bed breathed passion. It was
a swing-bed and at either
end were images of swans
inlaid with nine varieties of gems.
There they lay,
the young king and the lovely queen,
in bed in each other’s arms.
Their eyes, cast, bit
into each other, their bodies
melted in the clasp, like those
fabled moon-stones
when the moon’s rays fell on them.
........
In the small hours
of the morning, when the noise
of the last change of guards
at the palace gate died out,
the queen heard
a faint voice, and
was awakened. Enclosed
and lost
in the prison of her love’s arms,
she heard:
the voice grew into song,
sweet and alluring in the dark silence.
It came to her
like falling seeds
trouble the resting waters.
A tiny ripple
stirred
and grew. Soon it touched
her, tapped her gently, and
woke her out of her drowsy
slumber. Eyes wide open,
she stared in the dark,
and toward the direction of the song.
The voice came from the nearby
elephant stables. The song
went home to her, shook
her to the roots. Tired though
she was, her body rose again
tingling and all alive to the song.
She lost her heart to it,
to the possessor of that
divine voice. She paid him
in her mind
the tribute
of her entire body.
Translated from the Kannada by T.R.S. Sharma