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The Literary Shelf     
Amaru – The Lyric Poet

Here are some translated works of his love poems.

Amaru's Verses on Men in Love:

• The tenuous bamboo bridge spanning the double tide of the Malini (river) has been carried away, and now my handsome is cut off from me upon an island. The rain continues. Each night I climb up the hill from which I can see the trembling night of the house of Sarmicha. It shines in the wet darkness like a glance through tears.
    

• Her robe clung close to her body, and the tissue of it became transparent. I thank you, rain. You were, Sanabavi, as if you were naked. But, when the rainbow broke in flower, who warmed your little shivering breasts for you?
   

• If I had the talent of Valmiki I would write a poem with my lover as heroine. The first ten parts would be given over to the ten fingers of her hands, for they wove a veil in which I have wrapped up all my ancient loves. And I would consecrate the ten others to the ten nights we spent at Mabhahat.
    

• ‘Pity!’ she says, with bruised breasts and disordered hair. With eyes closed and legs still trembling, ‘Finish!’ she says. She says in a choked voice: ‘It is enough!’ And now her silence grows eternal. Is she dead or sleeping, is she meditating in delight on what has happened, or thinking of another?
   

• She makes me a precise salute, and withdraws her little feet under her fringes. She looks attentively at the flowers painted on her fan. If I venture to caress her gazelle (neck), she starts to smooth the feathers of her painted parakeet. If I speak, she asks a question of one of her women. I find a thousand delights in her timidity.
    

• If I told my pain to the torrent, the torrent would halt for me. If I told it to the palm tree, the tree would bend down about me. But you pass singing, and do not even regard me. I will tell my pain to the torrent. If the torrent does not halt for me, at least its water will refresh my brow. I will tell my pain to the palm tree. If the palm tree does not bend down about me, at least it will shade my grief. Once more I have conquered shame and told you my suffering. You refuse me the water of your lips, the shade of your shadow.
    

– Continued

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Image courtesy : Asia Society 
Folio from an Amaru Shataka Manuscript: Heroine Confiding in Her Attendant
India, Madhya Pradesh, Malwa region; about 1650 - 1660
Opaque watercolor and ink on paper
H. 8 1/4 in. (21 cm); W. 5 3/4 in. (14.6 cm)
Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of Asian Art 1979.058