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Begin in the small hours of the night, when the grove has gone still and the moon has emptied itself of light onto the flowers. On a lovebed strewn with petals, Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Mādhava lie face to face, and at the foot of that bed a kiṅkarī sits, a tiny handmaiden-self gathered wholly into service, pressing the lotus-feet of the Couple she lives only to serve. The Two are teasing one another, trading soft jests, and Śyāmasundara is watching Her smile. O Rādhe, that smile. He floats away upon it, carried off in some unnamed direction on the slow stream of Your sweetness, driven mad by the luster of a curve of the lips that is itself made of mahābhāva, the highest distillation of love. The handmaiden looks and looks through all creation for something to set beside it, and she cannot find it; nothing made will match a thing made of mahābhāva. At last, helpless before what she sees, she reaches for the only image vast enough to gesture toward it: koṭi-indu, a million moons, all their cool radiance laughing at once. Even that falls short, but love must say something, and so she names You koṭīndu-cchavi-hāsinī: She whose smile shines with the luster of millions of moons.

And then She speaks, and the handmaiden bids us listen. Her words come like fresh nectar gathered and poured out, sudhā that has never once grown stale, sweetness made new at every syllable. So the clever Nāgara leans in and pretends He has not quite caught what She said, only so that She will say it again at His asking, so He can drink it twice. The old poet Kavi Rañjana sings of it, kohilo kāhinī puchaye koto beri, how He keeps asking after the tale She has already told. She tells the same small things over, the same little news of the day, and to Him each telling arrives brand new, never the same dawn twice. The handmaiden tastes it too, this sweetness that can be savored in the very shaping of each sound on Your lips, and gives You this name: nava-sudhā-sambhāra-sambhāṣiṇī: She whose speech is an abundance of fresh nectar. Two lovers like these could spend whole ages in nothing but this, speaking and laughing, laughing and speaking, and never come to the end of it.

In the play of their pastimes the handmaiden sees another wonder and cannot keep silent: the twin golden pitchers of Your breasts put to shame the pride of every pitcher of gold. Vakṣoja-dvitayena hema-kalaśa-śrī-garva-nirvāsinī: She who banishes the conceit of golden vessels. For the jewels of Kṛṣṇa's every longing are kept hidden there, and to Him they are the whole of His treasure; against such a holding, the finest worked gold of any pitcher is a poor dull thing, and its boast withers and falls silent. So the handmaiden names You the destroyer of that pride, not in scorn of gold, but because nothing fashioned can stand beside what is fashioned of love.

She sees, too, that You are nava-nava-premotsavollāsinī: She who blossoms in festivals of love that are forever new. Nothing in all the worlds can bind Kṛṣṇa but pure, selfless love. The love of the gopīs is the greatest of loves, and among the gopīs You are the greatest, O Rādhe, and Your love, which no tongue can describe, holds Him entirely. In the rarest pastimes the handmaiden watches Him set out freely upon the blissful swells of the ocean of Your ever-fresh love for Him, and float there, willingly captive, asking for no shore. And where should such festivals be kept but here, in Vṛndāvana, the crown-jewel of all holy ground, where the sweet sea of Kṛṣṇa's amorous play is always rising? So she calls You vṛndāraṇya-vilāsinī: She who sports in the grove. Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī sings it in his Vṛndāvana-Mahimāmṛta, that I long to behold the sweet ocean named Vṛndāvana, where a jewel-bright Couple shine more lovely than millions of golden Ratis and dark-bodied Kāmadevas, given over to amorous pastimes too wonderful to hold in words. The handmaiden who tells these names knows herself emptied of every other refuge; Rādhārāṇī alone is her shelter, and without Her the whole world is hollow. Her qualities madden the mind, guṇe kore mana pāgala, until naming them is the only prayer left.

Now the night thins toward its end. Spent and content, the young Couple let Their eyes close slowly, the way bumblebees are folded shut inside the lotus-petals at dusk. The handmaiden drinks in the sweetness of that closing and then, worn out with her own joy, sleeps too. But the dawn is coming, and with the dawn comes fear, the fear of being seen, of being shamed before the eyes of the village. And so the heartbreak begins. They rise to part, and they cannot part. Half a step away and they turn back, take each other's faces in their hands, kiss again. The old poet of separation sings it true: streams of tears run down both faces, and the sakhīs are weeping too, rooted where they stand, unable to walk. For a moment the Two look anxiously into each other's startled eyes; their garments loosen, the flowers slip from their tousled hair, the anklets and the ornaments are gathered up and set aside. In great distress, each goes a separate way. They turn and turn again to look, until at last they cannot see each other at all, and the cloth at their breasts is soaked through with weeping. The sakhīs and mañjarīs are frightened the whole time that someone will catch sight of their tender princess, though in truth the road is empty at that hour, and there is no one there to see.

Then, breathing steady again, the handmaiden remembers one more thing, and out of it comes one more name. This Rādhā lives in a wondrous village: citra-grāma-nivāsinī. The Rādhāvallabha edition before us, true to Hit Harivaṃśa's stream, presses the geography close to the heart and glosses it plainly: this is Bṛhatsānu, Barsānā, the marvelous town of Her birth and play. For every soul of Vraja is Kṛṣṇa's own eternal companion, and they live only to assist Him in His pastimes. Picture the homeward walk now. Balarāma Dāsa sings the whole of it: the gopīs wrap themselves head to toe in yellow cloth to hide, and step softly, softly. Reaching Her own house, beautiful Rādhā glances round in fear lest one of Her elders be watching, and then quickly lies down upon Her bed, as though She had never left it. And he prays only this: that he might forever be allowed to behold these pastimes, day after day after day. With the very same longing Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī folds the whole verse into one asking: may this vṛndāraṇya-vilāsinī Rādhā be my only ullāsinī, my one and only giver of delight. So this verse turns the whole of its love into a single question. O Vṛndāraṇya-vilāsinī, O You who shine like a million moons and speak in fresh nectar and shame the pride of gold and blossom in festivals of love that never grow old, will You become, again and again, the one delight of this heart? Let it be so. Let there be no other delight.