Mira pushes aside the mountain you are climbing
Desire is never one way. Black
snakes crawl through your throat. The divine longs
for human proximity to divinity. The divine longs
for touch. You have not wanted
a body. And you have
wanted. A careless
tongue can make chatter
but unrequited love
can make an avalanche.
Your teeth chatter and you know
somewhere a funeral parade is moving, one ant
after another marching. Your snake shed its skins as the curve of a pilgrimage
awaiting dawn. Heaven is too much a metaphor
to be of use to a lover weeping for
a false love. Every shaman needs a healer
and every God a devotee they can admire.
When God comes back from the pilgrimage, you are more
plump. Everyone can see your wisdoms
sprouting. This time — dangerous. Even women
will cast stones. Watch the people’s hands: they carry
shards of their half-spoken dreams. But you have
invented an embrace. In the first worship,
you make the one devoted to devotion devoted to you.
You bring the mountain
into your lips. Without
prayer, your mouth blooms.
Copyright © 2019 by Purvi Shah. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Giridhara, your name is the raft, the one safe-passage over./ Take me quickly,’ declares Mirabai (as translated by Jane Hirshfield in Mirabai’s ‘Awake to the Name’). What does it mean for devotion to be reciprocated? To have deities devoted to us? This poem evokes a present-day Mira reinvigorating the story of Krishna (Giridhara) granting refuge to people by lifting a mountain with his finger. When we lean into our divinity, our sensuality, imagine that the gods need us too—what happens? Perhaps snakes, perhaps bloom.”
—Purvi Shah
Purvi Shah
