Lalleshwari Poems Set to Music:

Gently I weep for my mind,
caught in its illusion of ownership.
Mind, you’re not who you think you are.
You’re dancing over a pit.
Soon you’ll fall through,
and these things, you’ve valued
and collected will be left behind.
My sweet dear, do you understand this,
and if you do, how does your food taste?

- Lalleshwari
Translated by Coleman Barks
​

Let them throw their curses.
If inside, I am connected to what’s true,
my soul stays quiet and clear.
Do you think Shiva worries
What people say!
If a few ashes fall on a mirror,
use them to polish it.

- Lalleshwari
Translated by Coleman Barks
​

I didn’t trust it for a moment,
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.
It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
​and cut it into little pieces.

- Lalleshwari
Translated by Coleman Barks
​

Lalleshwari
1320-1392
​
Lalleshwari was a mystic poet born in 1320 in Kashmir, India. At a young age, she became devoted to the deity Lord Shiva. She was married at the age of 12, a custom of the time. The marriage was unhappy.

Ultimately, Lalleshwari left home and became a renunciate and deeply devoted follower of Shiva as a disciple of Sidhra Srikanth. She wandered in a state of divine bliss, without concern for the material. In her song-poems, which are the earliest compositions of the Kashmir language, Lalleshwari did not speak of Shiva as a masculine figure as she saw no distinction between herself and others. She spoke of God as an experience of the true reality, that of the unity of the self with the divine.

​Books:

Naked Song
Translated By Coleman Barks
©2006 
​
​Mystic Poet: Lalleshwari

Available from: Amazon
​and other book sellers

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Women in Praise of the Sacred
Edited By Jane Hirshfield
©1994 
​
​Mystic Poet: Lalleshwari

Available from: Amazon
​and other book sellers

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