Short Poems

The nightingale and — dinner-time,
With the whole family assembled.

The bees have flown, the cranes have settled: night is gone, day too will pass.
The maiden Jiva shivers and shudders: She knows not how her lover will receive her.

An unbaked pot retains not water: When the Swan departs, the body withers.
My arms are aching with scaring the crows. Kabir says, Now this tale is ended.

How can I expound His form or outline: there is no second who has seen Him.
He is neither Onkar nor Veda: what can I say of the secret of His race?
He is neither stars, nor sun, nor moon: He is not born of any father's seed.
He is neither land nor water, neither stillness nor wind — Who can name or lay commands on Him?
With Him there is neither day nor night: how can I name His family and caste?
Sakhi . In the void consciousness arose: then a light was manifested.
I sacrifice myself to the Purusa, who is the self-existent.

You who have come from my old country,
Tell me what has happened there! —
Was the plum, when you passed my silken window,
Opening its first cold blossom?

O all-knowing Lord, have mercy: I am foul, deceitful, the slave of desire.
Thou hast given me this precious birth as man: and given happiness and wealth and home besides.
Yet, O Incarnation of mercy, I renounced thy name: always I ran after the world's vain desires.
By sin and its fevers I am sore troubled: now I can bear these pains no more.
From the world I found no hope, no help: O Master, I seek but thy protection.

Lord, of thy doings there is no end.
Thou hast created the primal cell of all the universe: none can comprehend it.
Nor gods, nor men, nor munis had skill to trace it out, reading and reading again the Vedas with understanding.
Vedas, Puranas all proclaim thee, O Lord, unfathomable and infinite.
Thou art the reader of all hearts, dweller in every form, sustainer of all the souls of the world.
The moon, the sun, two lights thou didst create, O unfathomable light effulgent.

My mind is an apartment.
When it is all dark,
And I am about to sleep,
Who is that walking
On the floor overhead?

Leaning alone in the close bamboos,
I am playing my lute and humming a song
Too softly for anyone to hear —
Except my comrade, the bright moon.

The old man's autumn, who with joy
Hears the six strokes that tell the dawn.

They blossom forth, and so I gaze,
And so these flowers fade, and so......