2 Kabir Poems-versions by Robert Bly

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Know and feel while you are alive.

What you call “salvation” belongs to the time before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,

Do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

Just because the body is rotten –

That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now

You will simply end up with an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life

You will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the true teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: when the Guest is being searched for

It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.

Look at me and you will see a slave of that intensity.

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Oh friend, I love you, think this over

Carefully! If you are in love,

Then why are you asleep?

If you have found him,

Give yourself to him, take him.

Why do you lose track of him again and again?

If you are about to fall into heavy sleep anyway,

Why waste time smoothing the bed

And arranging the pillows?

Kabir will tell you the truth: this is what love is like:

Suppose you had to cut off your head

And give it to someone else,

What difference would that make?

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