Translated from the Braj Bhasa by Chloe Martinez
This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.
Mirabai lived in northern India in the late 15th-early 16th centuries. She became famous as a poet and devotee of the Hindu god Krishna, and most of her poems are addressed to Krishna, who she calls by various epithets (for example, “Giridhar” or “Mountain-Lifter”). She addresses Krishna intimately as a beloved, often an absent one, and she was often critiqued in her lifetime for casting aside social norms in her pursuit of spiritual goals. She is said to have been miraculously absorbed into an icon of Krishna at the end of her life and is considered by many a saint. Her poems were sung and passed along orally in her lifetime and continue to be sung in India today.
Chloe Martinez is a poet and scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020). Her poems and translations have appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah and elsewhere. She lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and daughters, and works at Claremont McKenna College. www.chloeAVmartinez.com.
