I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit     
              that loves birds and animals and the ants.
Perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your
              mother’s womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
              and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what 
              you once knew,
and that is why everything you do has some weird failure in it.
I have been thinking of the difference between water 
and the waves on it. Rising,
water’s still water, falling back,
it is water. Will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word “wave,” 
do I have to distinguish it from “water”?

There is a Secret One inside us. 
The planets in all the galaxies 
pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat: 
your shoulder is against mine. 
You will not find me in stupas, nor in Indian shrine rooms,
              nor in the synagogue, nor in cathedrals, 
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs twisting around the neck,
              nor in eating nothing but vegetables. 
When you look for me, you will find me instantly. 
You will find me in the tiniest house of time. 
Kabir says, “Student, tell me, what is God?”
He is the breath inside the breath.
I know the sound of the ecstatic flute,
but I don’t know whose flute it is.
A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.
A waterplant blossoms and is not attached to the bottom.
When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.
The moon bird’s head is filled with nothing but thoughts
              of the moon,
and when the next rain will come is all that the
              rain-bird thinks of.
Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

Kabir, born around 1400, was a religious reformer and the founder of a Hindu sect to which nearly a million people still belong. His poems are translated by Robert Bly in Try to Live to See This! (The Ally Press, Denver, Colo.). These versions are copyright 1976 by Robert Bly.