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Picture it. Not two faces first, not two figures, but two lights. The eye that wrote this verse looked into Vṛndāvana and could not, at the first instant, separate the lovers into persons; it saw jyotir-dvandvam, a twin radiance, a pair of living lights shining so close and so blended that they seem one flame burning in two tongues. The tradition cherishes this seeing. Hold it gently. Before They are bodies for us to adore, They are brightness, sāndra-ānandam, bliss so condensed it has thickened into light, and that light has stood up in the forest and shines.

Look closer and the two lights take their colors. One is dark and cool and tender, the blue radiance of Vrajendra-nandana, the blue jewel of the king of Vraja, whose limbs are softer than the blue indīvara-lotus, so soft they mock the flower for ever calling itself tender. The other is molten gold, Rāi, Śrī Rādhā, glistening like the petals of the golden lotus, Her wonderful youthful body trembling with light. Set Them against the flowers and watch the flowers lose. The blue lotus and the golden lotus had thought their beauty was their own; this Pair steals it, hāri, simply by standing there, and what was the pride of the lotus becomes only a faint echo of Them.

Now follow Them where the tradition follows Them. They have been rambling through the forest like an intoxicated pair of elephants, swaying, drunk on each other, and now They turn toward the Kālindī to rest a little. They come to a staircase that leads down into the Yamunā and sit upon its steps. O wind off the river, you are the first servant here: you lift drops of Yamunā-water and carry them cool and fragrant to Their limbs, surabhim anilaṁ śītalam, and in serving Them you become holy. And the river herself cannot hold still. Her waves dance in ecstasy at the sight of the two sweet forms above them and rush away toward the ocean, smuggling a little of that stolen sweetness out to all the waters of the world. Blooming lotuses float on her surface, Kahlāra and Kumuda, and the bumblebees come buzzing and drink their honey until they reel, drunk like everything else that comes near this place.

And They talk. Rādhā and Śyāma, leaning close, describe to each other the beauty of the water and the shores, naming the loveliness of the lotuses afloat there, each delighting to praise what the other delights in. Around Them the maidservant is wholly absorbed in service. See what she does: she loosens her thick braid of curling, fragrant hair, and with her own hair she wipes the grey dust of the forest-path from Their lotus-feet, asking nothing, only near and only useful. Others fan Them with fans woven of soft new sprouts; others bring fresh betel-leaves and cool water. This is the whole shape of bliss in Vṛndāvana: a Pair at rest, and love itself crowding close to serve Them.

Then the maidservant cannot keep silent, and she teases Them with the truth. O my Beloved Two, why do You spend Your praises on these lotuses? Your faces, Your every limb, easily defeat the luster of every blue and golden lotus that ever bloomed; the flowers should be praising You. And yet, she smiles, when I hear Your own mouths praising them, I think these poor flowers are blessed after all, for they have become the objects of Your speech. So even the lotus is lifted, not by its beauty, which was stolen, but by being noticed in the talk of the Divine Couple.

Hold here the great wonder that the Gauḍīya teachers will not let pass. This resting, this teasing, this ordinary fragrant afternoon, is the culmination of divine love, and the tradition reads Their pastimes as ripples on a bottomless ocean of prema. For think what this love accomplishes. How else could the Self-satisfied Supreme ever desire to make love? How could the Omniscient become stupefied and bewildered? How could the Unlimited consent to grow so small? More than in any other of His forms, Vrajendra-nandana Kṛṣṇa is subdued by the love of His devotees; the non-dual Absolute Truth, the one without a second, floats helplessly in every direction on the waves of līlā-rasa. Śrī Śuka Muni himself comes to this very edge when he describes the Rāsa-līlā: reme tayā svātma-rata ātmārāmo'pyakhaṇḍitaḥ, that though Kṛṣṇa is self-satisfied, the ātmārāma who needs nothing and no one, still He made love with Her. The Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī sets the seal on it: the very greatest quality of Kṛṣṇa is that He lets Himself be controlled by the love of His devotees, and Śrī Rādhā's love is so great that to answer it the Lord overrules even His own ātmārāmatā, His self-sufficiency, and shows Himself supremely conquered by Her. This is why the two lights are called prema-kanda, the root: the love we name the highest does not arrive from elsewhere to visit Them. It is born here, underground in these two joined lights, and everything tender in all the worlds is a single shoot off this one root.

And the play never stales. Nava-nava-rasam: ever-fresh flavour, the rasa renewing itself in the moment it is tasted; prollasat-keli-vṛndam: a host of delightful pastimes leaping up one after another, never twice the same. This is why Prabodhānanda, the seer of this verse, sets his own seal upon it and tells us plainly that this delicious rasa-effulgence, this Śrī Rādhā-Govinda shining as a single column of light on the Yamunā's bank, gives incomparable, matchless delight to the eyes, nirupama nayana-ānanda. Look, he says, and let the looking be your bliss. The twin radiance, sweeter than sweet, the very birthplace of love, simply shines.