Before the first cock crows,
fresh after bath
dressed in pleasant crimson,
when she walked upto me
and smiled, ‘Choose a matching shade
to adorn my forehead.’

Shaken up more in delight than surprise,
I felt as if the earth is slipping off my feet,
Or in high sea my boat has gone adrift.

The figurine of a Konark panel
who shared the bed with me on the first night
was no more there, vanished somewhere;
in her place a deity in full glory
stood in front to surprise me.

A red dot on the forehead
between the eyebrows - shapely and thin,
appeared to me as a sun at dawn
between the hills on the horizon,
a landscape that in my playful childhood
I had skillfully drawn very often.

Is my lady, reverently I divined,
a lotus, a pot of nectar
and a moon – all at a time,
emerged by the churning of the mythical sea of milk?
Fragrance, immortality and beauty in her I seek!

Beyond amorous desires and forget-me-not thoughts,
she was verily a rain cloud to sprinkle bliss;
I welcomed the day by folding her slim frame in my firm arms
and planted on her lips a flower-soft kiss!