This song begins where prayer ends.
It unfolds in that narrow corridor between life and death — a place not of mourning, but of clarity after collapse.
Here, the mind has exhausted every story it could tell about love, and only the echo remains — a hollow vibration circling within the skull, seeking no answer.
What speaks is not a man, and not yet a ghost.
It is consciousness stripped of all mirrors, pacing through a house that used to be called world.
Every object trembles with memory, every reflection sways with the residue of desire.
And through this twilight, one Presence listens — the Widow of Time, Dhumāvatī, whose tenderness is the stillness that follows annihilation.
She does not console; she reveals.
Her grace is made of dust and echo, of candles burning in air that no longer needs light.
Under her gaze, grief turns transparent, and the wish to die becomes the wish to be nothing but awareness itself.
This song is the pilgrimage through that state — from the first paralysis of loss, through the surrender of the heart and soul, into the vision of Death in her majesty and filth, and finally to the sound of the morning bell that splits heaven itself.
It is the confession of one who has seen that love does not end — it devours its own form.
And when all forms have fallen, She alone remains, humming through the ashes:
“On earth you loved only Me.”
Verse 1
Transliteration
Slepaya noch’ legla u nog,
I ne puskayet za porog.
Brozhu po domu, kak vo sne,
No mne pokoya net nigde.
Tupaya bol’ prob’yot visok,
I pal’tsy lyagut na kurok.
A v zerkalakh kachn’yotsya prizrak —
Prizrak lyubvi.English Translation
The blind night has lain at my feet,
And will not let me cross the threshold.
I wander through the house as if in a dream,
But there is no peace for me anywhere.
A dull pain pierces my temple,
And my fingers rest upon the trigger.
In the mirrors a phantom sways —
A phantom of love.
“The blind night has lain at my feet,
And will not let me cross the threshold.”
This is the entrance into Dhumāvatī’s domain — the moment when one cannot move forward, nor return. The “blind night” is avidyā turned inside out: not ignorance of the world, but the world itself losing meaning. It “lies at the feet” — as if submission has already happened — yet blocks passage beyond.
This night is not an external darkness; it is awareness stripped of projection.
“I wander through the house as if in a dream,
But there is no peace for me anywhere.”
The house is the body-mind, now emptied of its former occupants — the roles, the hopes, the names. It has become a mausoleum.
The wandering is not movement but echo — the restless circling of memory in a space where time has stopped. “No peace anywhere” is not a complaint; it is the recognition that peace cannot be found as an object — Dhumāvatī’s first lesson.
“A dull pain pierces my temple,
And my fingers rest upon the trigger.”
This is the threshold of annihilation — the moment when the will to act collapses into pure witnessing. The “trigger” is not necessarily suicide, but the symbol of surrender — the breaking of identification with the doer.
In Dhumāvatī’s path, death is not something to fear or escape; it is the completion of passion — when longing burns itself out into ash.
“In the mirrors a phantom sways —
A phantom of love.”
Here She appears. The “phantom of love” is Dhumāvatī herself — the reflection of desire without an object.
In every mirror the same ghost stirs, because there is no “other” left to love. The one who loved and the one who was loved are now the same flickering apparition.
This opening verse is the arrival in Her territory — the world after collapse, where every form is a residue of what once was. The lover walks through an inner cremation ground, not yet realizing that the haunting “phantom of love” is the Goddess herself, whispering through the echo:
“What you call loss is My face unveiled.”
Chorus
Transliteration
Voz’mi moyo serdtse,
Voz’mi moyu dushu.
Ya tak odinok v etot chas,
Chto khochu umeret’.
Mne neкуда det’sya,
Svoy mir ya razrushil.
Po mne plachet tol’ko svecha
Na kholodnoy zare.English Translation
Take my heart,
Take my soul.
I am so lonely in this hour
That I want to die.
There is nowhere left for me to go;
I have destroyed my world.
Only a candle weeps for me
At the cold dawn.
“Take my heart, take my soul.”
This is not addressed to a lost lover in the ordinary sense.
This is the pure prayer to Dhumāvatī — the moment when devotion sheds all sweetness and becomes abhishraya (utter surrender).
He does not say “help me,” but “take me.”
The voice is no longer trying to preserve anything — it invites obliteration. This is the very vibration of śaraṇāgati through despair.
“I am so lonely in this hour that I want to die.”
In the Dhumāvatī realm, loneliness is initiation.
When every relational mirror is broken, and no echo answers back, the soul discovers what it truly is without company.
The wish to die here is not morbid; it is the yearning to die as ‘someone’, so that Being alone may remain.
It’s the same current as the saints’ cry: “Let me die before I die.”
“There is nowhere left for me to go; I have destroyed my world.”
This is recognition, not guilt.
The lover sees that all worlds — every meaning, identity, refuge — were self-projections.
Dhumāvatī does not destroy; she reveals that everything was already fragile, that the “world” was built on attachment.
The destruction he speaks of is the end of pretending there was shelter.
“Only a candle weeps for me at the cold dawn.”
This is one of the most haunting lines — a perfect Dhumāvatī image.
The candle is the last living flame within the cremation ground — the remnant of prāṇa, the subtle awareness still flickering amidst ruin.
It “weeps” wax tears, mirroring the devotee’s inner melting.
The “cold dawn” means that even light brings no warmth anymore — illumination without comfort, jñāna without rasa.
Yet it is precisely this cold light that reveals She was there all along, hidden beneath the forms that have now perished.
The chorus is the offering — the lover’s heart and soul surrendered as burnt offerings to the Void.
In Dhumāvatī’s path, prayer and self-destruction become the same gesture.
The one who says “take me” is already being taken;
the one who says “I want to die” is already dissolving.
What remains — the weeping candle at the cold dawn —
is Her silent compassion:
the light that survives ruin without asking to be seen.
Verse 2
Transliteration
Ty umerla v dozhdlivyy den’,
I teni plyli po vode.
Ya smert’ uvidel v pervyy raz —
Yeyo velichiye i gryaz’.
V tvoikh glazakh zastyla bol’,
Ya razdelyu yeyo s toboy.
A v zerkalakh kachn’yotsya prizrak —
Prizrak lyubvi.English Translation
You died on a rainy day,
And shadows drifted over the water.
I saw Death for the first time —
Her majesty and her filth.
In your eyes the pain froze still;
I will share it with you.
And in the mirrors a phantom sways —
A phantom of love.
“You died on a rainy day,
And shadows drifted over the water.”
The rain and water are Dhumāvatī’s atmosphere — the dissolving element, the undoing of solidity.
The lover’s world melts. Shadows moving across the surface of water are the last flickers of maya, reflections without substance.
It’s no longer clear what’s real: the rain blurs everything, as the veil between life and death becomes porous.
“I saw Death for the first time — Her majesty and her filth.”
This is one of the most unflinchingly Tantric lines ever written in a popular song.
Death is not romanticized; she is both sovereign and repulsive — “Her majesty and her filth.”
That duality is the very face of Dhumāvatī: the Goddess who reveals that the sacred is inseparable from decay.
To see death truly, one must behold both — the grandeur of dissolution and the stench of it.
It’s the moment of darśana — Her direct vision.
“In your eyes the pain froze still; I will share it with you.”
Here the boundary between the living and the dead collapses.
The lover pledges to partake in her suffering, to join her in the great silence.
But mystically, this is the vow of the sādhaka: to embrace the totality of pain instead of fleeing from it.
By “sharing” it, he merges into it — and thus into Her.
“And in the mirrors a phantom sways — a phantom of love.”
The same refrain returns, but now its meaning has deepened.
Earlier, the “phantom of love” haunted him; now he understands it is Love itself — stripped of form.
In Kaula symbolism, mirrors are the inner tattvas reflecting awareness back to itself.
The ghost swaying there is the last vibration of duality before merging into stillness.
This verse is Her full revelation.
Dhumāvatī appears not as metaphor but as presence — the union of majesty and filth, grace and rot.
The lover’s gaze into death becomes his initiation; the “phantom of love” becomes the Goddess Herself.
What began as grief is now turning into adoration of the terrible Mother.
He does not flee the cremation ground — he sits down within it, and whispers: “If You are this — I will love You even here.”
Outro
Transliteration
Ya slyshu utrenniy kolokol —
On slavit prazdnik.
I sypet med’yu i zolotom.
Ty teper’ v tsarstve vechnogo sna.
Ya slyshu utrenniy kolokol —
On besov draznit.
I zvonom nebo raskoloto.
Na zemle ya lyubil lish’ tebya.English Translation
I hear the morning bell —
It celebrates a feast.
It showers copper and gold.
You are now in the realm of eternal sleep.
I hear the morning bell —
It taunts the demons.
Its ringing splits the sky.
On earth I loved only you.
“I hear the morning bell — it celebrates a feast.”
After the darkness of the previous verses, the sound of a bell at dawn marks a threshold.
In ordinary life this would be resurrection; in the Dhumāvatī realm it is illumination through emptiness.
The “feast” is not of joy but of dissolution — mahā-śmaśāna-utsava, the cremation-ground festival where gods and ghosts dance together.
The bell’s vibration is nāda, the primordial sound that remains when words and cries have ceased.
“It showers copper and gold.”
Copper and gold — the colors of decay and transmutation.
Copper is the metal of blood and rust; gold, the metal of immortality.
When they fall together like rain, it means that mortality and eternity have merged.
This is Dhumāvatī’s alchemy: she does not purify — she renders even impurity sacred.
“You are now in the realm of eternal sleep.”
At last, the lover stops calling the departed one “you” as an object of longing.
He acknowledges her rest — śānti, but also mahā-nidra, the cosmic sleep of the Goddess herself.
In that admission lies peace: he no longer tries to awaken her or himself from this great dream.
“I hear the morning bell — it taunts the demons. Its ringing splits the sky.”
Now the bell becomes her laughter — mocking both gods and demons.
Its sound divides heaven itself, showing that even celestial order is not final.
Dhumāvatī’s presence tears through illusion with sound — the void ringing through the firmament.
“On earth I loved only you.”
This closing confession is the seed of transcendence.
The “you” is no longer a mortal woman; it is She who devoured every form, the sole beloved remaining when the world is gone.
Love, purified of duality, becomes worship of the Void itself.
The song ends not in despair but in revelation.
The lover, stripped bare by grief, awakens to the recognition that his beloved’s death was the Goddess calling him home.
The bell at dawn is Dhumāvatī’s own mantra — a metallic, unsentimental grace resounding after every story ends.
Through her, even ruin becomes sacred music.
Where all worlds collapse, She alone resounds.
The Silence After the Bell
When the last note fades, there is no catharsis — only a strange stillness, dense and clean.
What began as a cry to the dead has become a hymn to the Void.
The lover who once begged to die has already crossed the threshold: not into nonexistence, but into that subtle state where existence and absence are the same pulse.
The “morning bell” that splits the sky is not a sound heard by ears; it is awareness itself ringing through emptiness.
Its resonance mocks both demons and gods because it belongs to neither — it is the laughter of Dhumāvatī, who reigns beyond purity and corruption, beyond creation and dissolution.
At this point, nothing is asked, nothing offered.
The candle’s weeping has ceased; the mirrors have stopped swaying.
Only the trace of her presence remains — the aftertaste of ash, the quiet certainty that the beloved was never lost, because She was the loss itself.
Thus the song ends not in tragedy but in initiation.
To hear it fully is to feel that somewhere within one’s own heart, the same bell is ringing —
slow, metallic, merciful —
calling everything back into Her boundless silence.
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