Separation

What difference will it make?
if I go down to the river to look for You
in the stream of the water-
or if I sit down here before Your picture,
Either way it is the same because
I have Your Name to recite over and over
and it seems I have actually done both,
by thinking of the river I have gone there
and I've come back to where I have not left-
sitting before Your picture.
Everything seems empty and vacant
because I am not worthy
and do not really have You as my Lover and Friend.
Or I do not understand
that You Love me beyond what I can measure
-I cannot realize that.
I think only that You should love me
more than anyone
and then I think I am unspeakably low.
Nothing saves me but Your Name-
Not so much the literature of great learned Goswamis
delineating the 12 categories of relationship to You,
and not by saying the word Bhakti, Bhakti, Bhakti
can I bring it about.
But to say "KRISHNA," and say all the words of the mantra
together, HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA KRISHNA KRISHNA
HARE HARE HARE RAMA HARE RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE
-and actually saying it hundreds and thousands of
times, alone with You-then I'm pacified.
Though the truth is I am lazy and
as empty handed as any impersonalist philosopher,
still recitation of Your Name is a balm
to this separated soul who is trying to come back
just on Your Name.