Lustful Women of Winter--Kalidasa

The women love chewing beetle-nuts.
Around their necks,
They wear garlands of flowers.
Their lotus-faces freshly creamed,
They enter bedrooms after
Enjoying their liquor drinks.
The fragrance of aloe-vera,
All around them.
In the bedrooms they find
Their scolding husbands
Daunted earlier by rude remarks.
But the husbands compromise
Seeing their lustful wives
And get impatient for love-making.

Wives too overlook their grouching,
And hurry to beds even when quarreling.
They would too not miss love-making.
The winter fuses them in joys of love.


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Original in Sanskrit taken from the Ritusamahara of Kalidasa. Rendered into free verse from a literal English translation