Papiha-bird, don’t you dare sing like my lover.If she hears, this madwoman will find you, catch you, and twist off your wings.She’ll have your beak cut off, papiha, and pour salt in the wound.My beloved’s mine, and I’m his: what have you got to say about it? Bird! Don’t talk! You sound like my beloved.If I was meeting my lover today, your words would sound sweet,and I’d decorate your beak, and I’d wait on you like my king. O Papiha—the beloved’s words—don’t speak.I’ll write my love a letter. Crow, you take it and go!Tell Mr. Lover Man this: “Your lovelorn girl can’t eat a grain of rice.” Birdsong absence silence.Faithful Mira’s distraught and wandering, she keeps calling, love, love.Come quickly, Lord of the Interior. Without you I can’t stay, can’t go. [untitled]पपइया रे पिव की वाणी न बोल॥सुणि पावेली बिरहणी रे, थारो राखेली पाँख मरोड़।चोंच कटाऊँ पपइया, ऊपरि कालर लूण।पिव मेरा मैं पीव की रे, तू पिव कहैंसू कूण।थारा सबद सुहावणा रे, जो पिव मेल्या आज।चोंच मढाऊँ थारी सोवनी रे, तू मेरे सिरताज।प्रीतम कूँ पतियाँ लिखूँ कउवा तू ले जाई।प्रीतम जी सूँ यूँ कहै रे, थाँरी बिरहणि धान न खाई।मीराँ दासी व्याकुली रे, पिव पिव करत विहाइ।बेगि मिलो प्रभु अंतरजामी, तुम बिन रह्यौई न जाइ॥
Mira Threatens a Bird
Feature Date
Series
- Translation, What Sparks Poetry
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“Mira Threatens a Bird” by Mirabai from Blue Like My Beloved, translated by Chloe Martinez.
Translation copyright © 2026 by Chloe Martinez.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Mirabai (ca.1498–1546) is one of the most celebrated premodern poets of India. She lived in sixteenth-century Rajasthan and dedicated her life to Krishna. She wrote poems of love, surrender, and devotion in Braj Bhasha, a premodern dialect of Hindi. Mirabai is widely known throughout India today, where she is depicted in films, comic books, artwork, novels, and plays.
Chloe Martinez is the translator of Blue Like My Beloved: Poems of Mirabai (New Directions, 2026); coeditor of Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD (Chicago, 2026); and author of the poetry collection Ten Thousand Selves and the chapbook Corner Shrine. A 2026 NEA Translation Fellow, she is assistant editor at Beloit Poetry Journal and works at Claremont McKenna College.
The sixteenth-century poet and saint Mirabai has long been an iconic figure in India. Tagore famously named his daughter after her and praised her as a figure of female liberation; Gandhi referenced her in speeches on nonviolence and anti-colonialism—her songs were sung in his ashrams. Today her poems continue to be sung by Bollywood singers, folk musicians, and ordinary people. In Blue like My Beloved, the poet-translator and scholar Chloe Martinez—who spent decades studying, absorbing, and translating Mirabai’s work—has compiled a selection of Mirabai’s poetry that includes her greatest hits alongside lesser-known poems. The collection spans the range of Mirabai’s moods and themes in a vibrant poetry of intimacy and visionary perception that burns with a lasting brilliance akin to that of Rumi or Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
"‘Be all in, body and soul,’ Mira advises, clear-sighted in her fidelity to Krishna. Blue Like My Beloved captures the world of Mirabai with such poignancy and attentiveness that we, as readers, fall tenderly into its lyricism, its unabashed ferocity, and the delight of watching Mira ‘serve her beloved Mountain Lifter.’ Yet she is herself a lifter of mountains—of Hari, of the deepest wisdom that frees her to teach us, who struggle to love, how to dwell inwardly with the fervor of sentient ardor. Martinez’s translation is illuminating in the way it both preserves and modernizes the power of Mira’s devotional lyrics to their deepest radiance. What a gift this translation is!
— Prageeta Sharma
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
