LALLA - LALDED
KASHMIRI
( BORN 1320 DIED 1390?)

Dance, Lalla, with nothing on but air.
Sing, Lalla, wearing the sky.
Look at this glowing day!
What clothes could be so beautiful, or more sacred?

Below are three examples of Lalla's works each has two versions

I Lalla entered the jasmine garden,
Where Shiva and Shakti were making love.
I dissolved into them,
and what is this to me, now?
I seem to be here, but really
I am walking in the jasmine garden.
I, Lalla, entered by the garden-gate
                              of mine own mind,
And there (O joy!) saw Siva with                           Shakti sealed in one;
And there itself I merged in the Lake
                                of Immortal Bliss.
Now while alive I am unchained
from the wheel of birth and death,
What can the world do unto me?

********************

I began as a bloom of cotton outdoors,
Then they bought to a room where they washed me.
Then the hard strokes of the carder's wife.
Then another woman spun thin threads,
twisting me around her wheel.
Then the kicks of the weaver's loom made cloth,
and on the washing stone ,
washermen wet and slung me about
to their satisfaction,
whitened me with earth and bone,
and cleaned me to my own amazement.
Then the scissors of the tailor, piece by piece,
and his careful finishing work.

Now, at last, as clothes,
I find You and freedom.
This living is so difficult before one takes your                                                                      hand.

Hoping to bloom like a cotton flower,
I, Lalla, set forth in the colourful world.
But soon the cleaner and the carder came
and gave me hard knocks and blows.
Spun into a gossamar yarn
by a woman spinner on her spinning wheel,
I was helplessly hung upon a loom,
and given more knocks from the weaver's                                                            broom.

Now turned into cloth, I was dashed and                                                           dashed
by the washerman on the washing-stone.
Then into a large mortar made of stone,
he threw me, and with his grimy feet,
rubbed me with fuller's earth and soap.
The tailor now worked his scissors on me,
and cut me with care, piece by piece.
Thus was it that I, Lalla, at last
entered the High Estate of God.

********************

Fame is water
carried in a basket.

Hold the wind in your fist,
or tie up an elephant
with one hair

These are accomplishments
that will make you famous
Like water in a colander are name and fame:
they do not last.

Whoever in his fist can hold* a storm,
Or tether an elephant with a hair of his head,
(Whoever controls the storms in his breast,
Or tethers the wild elephant of desire),
'Tis he whose name and fame endure.

********************


To stop a running stream, to cool a raging fire,
To roam the skies on sandalled feet,
To milk a wooden cow -
All this is fraud and jugglery.

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