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Picture it. The lovegame is over. The grove has gone quiet, and there She stands, fresh from the play that has loosened everything art had set in place. The tradition tells us this is the very moment Śrīpāda chooses to pray: not Rādhā arranged and ornamented by the dawn maidservants, but Rādhā as She is when Śyāmasundara's own hands have undone the careful work. And so the prayer begins, as we must begin, with the hair.

O glossy, curling, blue-black hair. At dawn the sakhīs wove that braid with such care, and now it hangs free, because in the heat of love Hari Himself opened it, drew His fingers through it, scattered it across Her shoulders. Here is a secret the rasika devotees can receive and to which, for others, the door stays simply shut: this loosened hair is lovelier than the perfect braid ever was. The braid was made by hands. This sweet disorder was made by love. The very crookedness of the curls is the signature of His touch. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja fixes it for us in the Govinda-Līlāmṛta: jaihmyaṁ keśe dṛśi taralatā niṣṭhuratvaṁ kuce'syaḥ: Her hair is crooked, Her glance is restless, Her breasts are firm, and all of it for one reason only, to fulfill every last desire of Hari, and none but Rādhā can fulfill them. What in anyone else would be counted a flaw is in Her the exact instrument of His joy. Crookedness, restlessness, firmness, set by providence at just the right places upon Her body, so that She alone, and no one who has ever been or will be, can satisfy the whole desire of the Lord of Her life and make Him most happy.

O bimba-red lips, now split and pierced. The bimba fruit is small and crimson and full, and Her underlip is just so, vidalad-bimboṣṭhī: the bimba lip now bruised soft where it was bitten. As the bee will not be content to hover near the red bandhūka flower but must pierce it to draw out the honey, so Hari was not content to gaze at these lips; He pressed them with His teeth and drew their sweetness into Himself. And the maidservants who serve this love do not look away from that scene. They love to have witnessed it; they treasure it, because their whole happiness is the happiness of these two.

O moon-like face, O Candrānane. Ordinarily we praise Her face as a spotless moon, a flawless disc of light. But here, lovingly, we must call it the spotted moon, the stained moon, and rejoice in the staining. For Śyāma found Her eyes so beautiful that He kissed them, and the dark kohl lifted from Her eyelids onto His lips. Seeing this, She smiled, and from that smile it was as though nectar trickled out, and He drank that nectar with the cups of His own lips, and so the kohl was carried again and pressed onto Her cheek. This is why the moon of Her face is marked. Not a blemish: a love-token, the trace of where He kissed. O Candrānane, moon-faced one stained with the very proof of being loved, this is the moon I would behold.

O eyes that defeat the wagtails, kheḷat-khañjana-gañjanākṣi. The little khañjana darts and flickers and cannot hold still, and the poets have always praised its restlessness; but Her sidelong glances defeat it utterly. In the special pastimes the rasika devotees are given to see, Her eyes move with a playfulness no bird could match, restless not from idleness but from the fullness of love. O pearl at the tip of Her nose, rucimat-nāsāgra-muktāphalā: a single bright pearl hangs and trembles there, catching the light, swinging with every breath and every glance. O full hips, pīna-śroṇī; O waist so slender, tanudarī, that it seems it should not bear such fullness; O breasts whose round borders the singer calls exceedingly wonderful, stana-taṭī vṛtta-cchaṭā ati-adbhutā, an aura of roundness one can only adore and never describe. O creeper-arms, soft and tender as new vines, bhuja-vallī, ringed and ringed again with lovely bangles, cāru-valaye, that chime when She moves.

And all of this, every limb and every love-mark, the heart gathers up into one cry. He has named Her by the loosened hair, by the bitten lip, by the stained moon-face, by the wagtail-shaming eyes, by the swinging pearl, by the full hips and slender waist and wondrous breasts and vine-soft, bangled arms. Ten names, the tradition counts them, ten ways the heart has found to call Her. And having named Her so completely, he does not say "I see You." He says the opposite. All of this must be spiritually experienced; none of it can be reached by words, none of it grasped by the ordinary eye. And so the whole verse, with all its lavish praise, breaks at last into a single petition: svaṁ rūpam āviṣkuru. O Rādhe, reveal Your own transcendental form to me. Do not let me stop at the rumor and the description. Show Yourself, of Your own mercy, unveil what no eye can take by force.