When shall I look upon my Lord?

“Waiting”

• With head on hand before my door,
• I sit and wait in vain.
• Along the road to Pandhari
• My heart and eyes I strain.
• When shall I look upon my Lord?
• When shall I see him come?
• Of all the passing days and hours
• I count the heavy sum.
• With watching long my eyelids throb,
• My limbs with sore distress,
• But my impatient heart forgets
• My body’s weariness.
• Sleep is no longer sweet to me;
• I care not for my bed;
• Forgotten are my house and home,
• All thirst and hunger fled.
• Says Tuka, Blest shall be the day, —
• Ah, soon may it betide! —
• When one shall come from Pandhari
• To summon back the bride.

— Tukaram (trans. Nicol Macnicol)

Tukaram (1607–1649) was a Hindu poet, born in India, and considered the greatest of the Maharashtrian poets and student of Namdev (c. 1270–1350). The author of a thousand hymns (abhangs — which mark the spiritual culmination known as bhakti), Tukaram popularized a form of worship that was stripped of sectarianism, ritualism, and intellectualism.