Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Time Before Death by Kabir, Translated by Robert Bly



I don't believe Robert Bly has taken great poetic license with his translation of this poem by Kabir.  I find his wording of the last line, the punch line, to be very rhythmically satisfying.

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... 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 rejoin 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 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 Teacher is,
     Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
     it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
     does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.





This translation is available in The Kabir Book

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What's Going On Here?

Pretty much what the tagline says. I'm reciting poems I like, and making mashups of poems I like with the music for which my ear hungers when I read and think of these poems. It is my sincere hope that other lovers of these poems will do likewise.