The Plums Tasted

The plums tasted sweet to the unlettered desert-tribe girl- but what manners! To chew into each! She was ungainly, low-caste, ill mannered and dirty, but the god took the fruit she'd been sucking. Why? She'd knew how to love. She might not distinquish splendor from filth but she'd tasted the nectar of passion. Might not know any Veda, but a chariot swept her away- now she frolics in heaven, esctatically bound to her god. The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira, will save anyone who can practice rapture like that- I myself in a previous birth was a cowherding girl at Gokul.