On Translating Mira (Again!)

Mira—also known as Mirabai—is always talking to or about God. For Mira, God is Krishna, an avatar (or embodied form) of the Hindu divinity Vishnu, who is transcendent and also imminent—Mira’s beloved. He is often absent or inaccessible, a “yogi” who she imagines is off meditating in a forest while she awaits his return. These three poems deal with that absence in different emotional registers. The rueful, world-weary speaker of “Mira Should Have Known Better” warns other women about the dangers of love with a series of proverbial and figurative statements. The alternating voices in “Mira’s Over It” sound like a friend offering advice that Mira can’t seem to take. “Mira with Sarcasm” talks back angrily to Krishna. And yet, each poem ends on a note of devotion that overrides advice or rationality.

Mira’s use of many names for God in these poems—some translated here, some left untranslated, none of them actually “Krishna”—might seem confusing. She uses these names to reference different attributes or mythological stories of God, but even when she addresses “Rama” (an entirely different avatar of Vishnu), any reader familiar with Mira’s poetics will understand that she is really talking to Krishna.

My translations do not retain Mira’s rhymed couplets, and I allow my lines to move around a bit on the page in ways that the original Braj Bhasha lines do not. But many formal constraints beyond rhyme and lineation shape these poems. My use of Mira’s name in the final lines follows the originals (the titles of the poems are my own, an echo of that convention). The italicized lines in my translations are repetitions, versions, and fragments of the first line of each poem, a way to show that the line recurs as a refrain when these poems are sung. Finally, the contemporary turns of phrase I use are very much in keeping with Mira’s diction, which, in her time, would have sounded direct, intimate, and plainspoken.

(For more on Mira’s life, read my previous translator’s note.)