By Kalakantha dasa
After You steal butter, Your earrings dance and shine
as You flee Your mother in Gokula pastimes.
Though you are all blissful, all knowing, ever-new
Greatest of controllers, Your mother controls You.
She shows You the stick and she binds You by the waist.
As You rub Your frightened eyes, tears roll down Your face.
Sobbing and quick breaths make Your necklace of pearls shake.
Ropes of her love bind You in Your mother’s embrace.
Relishing Your childhood activities like this,
You plunge Your devotees in deep oceans of bliss.
Though many revere You, by love You are subdued.
Again and again, Lord, I bow down before You.
Although You give freedom, I don’t ask to be free,
Nor do I want anything You could offer me.
I only request that Your sweet childhood pastimes
Ever be enacted in my heart and my mind.
Curly hair encircles Your face of blackish-blue.
Kisses make Your cheeks look like red bimba fruit.
May this sublime vision be all that I can see.
Any other treasure has no value to me.
Damodar! O Vishnu! O Lord beyond compare,
Be pleased with a soul sunk in oceans of despair.
Uplift and protect me with glances from Your eyes;
Shower Your compassion like rainfall from the sky.
Two sons of Kuvera were cursed to stand as trees;
You gave them the chance to become Your devotees.
My Lord, will You offer the same blessing to me?
I don’t want to merge with Your identity.
Although in Your belly the universe is found,
Your mother’s effulgent rope has Your belly bound.
I bow to that rope and to Radha, Your most dear,
And those sublime pastimes in which You appear.
Nice one prabhu. I also wrote an English version which I've been singing for some years now. In fact I have a whole song book of Vaishnava bhajans in English, composed in the same metre as the originals. It really helps the meditation, and Srila Prabhupada did say how important it is that we understand what we are singing. I'll post some of mine here when I get a chance.