Only when with Her can He stir
Shakti She's Shiva's Power
Even Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva salute her
Dare compose a paean? you good-for-nothing "poet"
Never a good turn in your life you're unfit even to offer prayer
2.
A speck of dust at Your lotus feet
You do not walk You float
You're too lofty for dust
If lotuses Your feet
Imagine the rest
And the speck it's
Versatile
Brahma makes perfect worlds with It
Vishnu carries It – somehow – on his heads
Hoods if translated Serpent Adi-sesha,
Vishnu's parasol
Heads or hoods,
takes a thousand to
hoist all worlds
Seven nether seven upper
Shiva smashes It
Smears all over
as if ash
3.
More similes to explain Your effect:
Dark in the ignorant as
some city on an island
until You, Sun, rise
Dim the wits until You, Honey, flow flower-clusters
Wishful the poor until You, Precious Gem
You save the sunken
as Vishnu as wild-boar Varaha
dived in and surfaced
Sunken earth balanced on tusk
4.
The gods gesture pose
with their hands they grant
Boons
Fearlessness
Not so You
Even Your feet the worlds' refuge
know how
to free from fear
to give results
5.
By adoring You, Mother
of good fortune for
people who bow to You
Hari Vishnu
became a woman Mohini
led the foe-of-cities Shiva
astray
By saluting you, Cupid has
the might to mess with sages' minds
the looks Rati's eyes lick
6.
Daughter of Snow-Mountain,
Although Cupid's ill-equipped
Bodiless
Flower-bow
Bee-bowstring
Five arrows (floral flimsy)
For aide, (young) Spring
(Mild) Malaya wind his war-chariot
By the mercy of Your
slight sidelong glance
he wins over the world
on his own
7.
May She
Slim-waist
Jingle-girdle askew
from the fullness of breasts
picture a young elephant its trunk its frontal globes
swollen in the rutting season
Her face full autumn-moon
Bow-arrows-noose-goad
in Her hands
Oh the very verve
of the crusher-of-three-cities Shiva
Be here before us
