TANKA

A bell lily blooming under a shrub in the summer field — love so unrecognized is painful
indeed!

Those sedges in light-flooded Naniwa —
you spoke as intimately as their clinging roots,
you said it would run deep into years, it would last long,
so I gave you my heart, as spotless
as a clear mirror.
From that day,
unlike the seaweed that sways with the waves,
I did not have a heart that goes this way and that,
I trusted as one trusts a great ship.
But has a god, a rock-smasher, put us apart?
Or someone of this world interfered?
You used to come but you no longer do,
and no messenger bearing the catalpa branch appears.

TWO TANKA

I came to this spring field to pick violets. But I loved the field so much I've slept here all
night

Our sovereign familiar with the eight corners —
his eternal palace where we serve
in Saika Field — visible from its back
is an island in the offing. There on its clean shore
when the wind blows, white waves churn,
when the tide ebbs, lovely seaweed is harvested.
So noble since the age of gods,
that island mountain of Tamatsu!

ENVOYS

On the rocky shore of the island in the offing, the lovely seaweed — I will miss it when it
goes under the flowing tide

In vine-trailing Iwami's sea,
at uncertain Cape Kara,
deep-sea fleece grows on hidden rocks,
lovely seaweeds grow on the wild shore.
Like those lovely seaweeds, yielding, you slept with me,
deeply as deep-sea fleece I think of you,
but the nights we slept together were not many,
I came away, parting with you as trailing vines do.
My heart aches, center of my vitals,
longing, I turn around to look,
but on Mount Ferry of large ships
yellow leaves scatter, flutter so
I cannot see your sleeves clearly.

Look round our World; behold the chain of Love
Combining all below and all above.
See plastic Nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace.
See Matter next, with various life endu'd,
Press to one centre still, the gen'ral Good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,

Serve your God, who has come into this temple of life!
Do not act the part of a madman, for the night is thickening fast.
He has awaited me for countless ages, for love of me He has lost His heart:
Yet I did not know the bliss that was so near to me, for my love was not yet awake.
But now, my Lover has made known to me the meaning of the note that struck my ear:
Now, my good fortune is come.
Kabir says: " Behold! how great is my good fortune! I have received the unending caress of my Beloved! "

He who is meek and contented, he who has an equal vision, whose mind is filled with the fullness of acceptance and of rest;
He who has seen Him and touched Him, he is freed from all fear and trouble.
To him the perpetual thought of God is like sandal paste smeared on the body, to him nothing else is delight:
His work and his rest are filled with music: he sheds abroad the radiance of love.
Kabir says: " Touch His feet, who is one and indivisible, immutable and peaceful; who fills all vessels to the brim with joy, and whose form is love. "

O man, if thou dost not know thine own Lord, whereof art thou so proud?
Put thy cleverness away: mere words shall never unite thee to Him.
Do not deceive thyself with the witness of the Scriptures:
Love is something other than this, and he who has sought it truly has found it.

Subtle is the path of love! Therein there is no asking and no not-asking,
There one loses one's self at His feet,
There one is immersed in the joy of the seeking: plunged in the deeps of love as the fish in the water.
The lover is never slow in offering his head for his Lord's service.
Kabir declares the secret of this love.