Kabir Says...

God Says To Kabir, And Kabir Repeats It To Us

I am here with you my dear,
when did I go away?
No need to look for me in the destinations of pilgrims
I am not in the shrine.
Do not search for me in the idols of clay.
Do not give up the world in despair
Do not seek retreat for my sake.
Do not look for me in temples
Do not try to find me in mosques
Do not travel in search of me to the city of Kashi
Do not climb mountains to have a glimpse of me.
It's all in vain.
I was never found by those who repeatedly uttered my name
Some tried to reach me by living in austerity
Some followed rituals and starved themselves in a life-time spent in retreat
None of them found me.
But I am not that hard to please.
A heart that yearns to meet me
may find my gates opened instantly.
Listen to me O sages,
I come to those who know in their hearts
that I have never been away.
And truly, when did I go away?

Dusk :A Twilight God

Dusk

In moments such as these

I belong to none.

The floodgates have to be opened;

And I must stand by and watch.

Without a foothold on the slippery shore

I stand,

Bending low, with the reeds on the banks to catch

To retrieve what I think is wealth.

Hardly ever is anything caught.

The tremendous flow and the gorge swallow all.

This is decadence without a cadence, without a sound—

A cancelled past is not history erased;

It’s nothing but a cancelled memory from a murky scroll

Like a promise made to one’s own self

Now pushed deep down in the vaults.

The deceptive summer setting in

After the delayed monsoon departs,

Casts long shadows in the twilight-dusk—

Shadows which linger painfully long,

Longer than they should,

For they hold neither a warmth nor the chilling fear of what may come.

It’s waiting until dark.

Darkness has immense gratitude.

Its expanse has the kindness which shields from the gruesome light of the world:

The world that goes by the name “Reality”.

This darkness is wise.

It does not strive to teach.

Its parables are silent.

Its black ink knows how to spill over all the light of the human script.

I have no use for a script any way now.

Perhaps in this darkness there is a script I could never read.

Perhaps I may read the cyber-space now with a greater clarity.

And perhaps I may yet fail to read the word in the sky and upon the sea.

It’s time to acknowledge the dark

Awesome in magnitude,

Submerged in sad delight

Of the final defeat

Faced with the God I can no longer fight.

Who knows; perhaps in this darkness, hides the light

And the edge of the road that was meant to be travelled and seen

By my imperfect human eye.

Image : Tanya Dimitrova

The Song of an Arabian Night : Inspired by the vaguely recalled Mythical Tales of the Arabian Nights

A Song of the Arabian Night

The moon shone for the night and the night sang of pain

The pain gnawed at the core of the heart.

The agonizing duet of the moon and the night had no other listener but me.

There was a mystique of fragrance lingering behind

Changing the garb and softly leaving, to melt in the dark.

A dim image that had vanished from the wall

Was yet trapped in the marks left behind,

The image was singing still.

There was a single light with a diminished aura

A moment of brightness and a moment of dark,

It trudged the path of the night.

The mystique of the aroma beckoned to come

As the ray of light shone to illumine end of the night,

Beseeching and reminding, awakening a belated response to the wanderer’s fabulous tales.

The narrator withheld the heart of the tale for the listener for whose sake the tale was made.

The chain of rusted iron which was creaking on the wooden door- frame

Kept scowling and groaning and lamenting through the night,

Mistaking every stray sound that the night made

For the sound of the foot-fall of the one

Who failed to come.

The nights fail to recognize the falsity of the hope.

But for sure it was

Some hope and a delusive dream

That kept the night on through the dark.

A hope, a dream, they hold the torch

And lead the tired hearts

Through the hours of despair and the darkest alleys of nights.

At daybreak, the duet ceased and the moon went missing again;

The song of the night faded, lifting the darkest spell..  



Image : Courtesy : +Latif Z 

Night desert 

Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you.

(Old Native American elder story)

Picture: Luis Gabriel Pacheco