Another Man's Woman

My lover has failed to come to the trysting place, It is perhaps that his mind is dazed, Or perhaps that he went to another woman, Or lured perhaps by festive folk, that he delays, Or perhaps along the dark fringe Of the forest he wanders lost - JAYADEVA If we’d lived in another age, I’d have been the kind of woman who refused to cast down her eyes. The kind of woman the other maids in town despise because she forgets to tie up the calves and split the curds. You know the kind - with a tilt in her hips and hair that slips continually from her braids. But since we live in a world that’s just reflection, mere illusions of the mind; perhaps I can be her after all - the one whose hips defeat the mountains with their greatness, whose breasts are heavy, close and high – sandal-pasted; who walks through moonless nights with lotus skin and lotus feet across forbidden boundaries. I’ll be the kind who sallies out to wait for love with musk-kissed hair and navel bared in a thousand secret places – past the cowsheds and the balsam grove, across the river, to the garden of hibiscus. And although the night be dark and fierce enough to stir the seven sleeping oceans, I’ll deceive the forest like a shadow, slipping noiselessly past evil eyes and serpent tongues and the husband who lies inside jealous of my devotion. But if I should reach the river bank and see you there - combing another woman’s hair. If I should see the girdle loosen from her waist while you string jasmine round her supine face. If you should drink the honeyed sweet from the petals of her crimsoned lips - I won’t question this betrayal, or ask who this other woman is. I’ll simply walk into the darkness where every trunk and branch and leaf looks like you, feels like you, speaks like you: deep-chested yellow-limbed rain-cloud blue. And later, while the husband sleeps, I’ll make my way to the town’s cremation grounds. I’ll strip away my clothes and dance among the mounds of ash to command the churning of a storm. For I have been with you since you were born and will stay with you till you return - soaked with the lasting dawn.