“No one knows in which shell the priceless pearl does hide.”

translated by Thomas Rain Crowe

they do not mix
ever
but especially at midnight
just as the light goes out on the Empire State Building
and your worn old heart

Waiting beside a friend’s coffin
I was afraid of catching your eyes,
Of seeing the painful trembling of your lips
Which I have kissed in some room only yesterday.

I felt guilty, waiting erect
Beside the deceased
One by one my friends are dead and gone
Leaving behind them an age of grief.

Yesterday I gave you a rose, you were happy
Now I put a rose on this coffin
Side by side, strange and absurd
They flapped their wings and flew away.

Waiting beside a friend’s coffin
You and I sat through the whole night
Recalling what our generation lived through
One by one, a child plucked
all the roses in us.

How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own little boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out.

translated by Robert Bly

he walks on bad legs
a victim of over extending
this life was once
worth living
now it is a burden
fighting injustice
isn’t so easy anymore
it gets harder to tell
who’s who what’s what
good guys aren’t the only ones
wearing white hats
and those he helps
gossip about his mask
and those silver bullets
so he trudges on
a memory even to himself
another lone ranger
looking for his horse
and a faithful companion
neither on the horizon
and night comes on quicker
than he remembers

Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

translated by Coleman Barks

Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

translated by Robert Bly

What have the generals accomplished?
what they know
is less than what we’ve learned–

a sword’s a stinking thing
a wise man will use
as seldom as he can.

translated by David Young

Lying on a high seat in the south study,
We have lifted the curtain–and we see the rising moon
Brighten with pure light the water and the grove
And flow like a wave on our window and our door.
It will move through the cycle, full moon and then crescent again,
Calmly, beyond our wisdom, altering new to old.
. . .Our chosen one, our friend, is now by a limpid river–
Singing, perhaps, a plaintive eastern song.
He is far, far away from us, three hundred miles away,
And yet a breath of orchids comes along the wind.

translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu

They change,
though you can’t see it
in the color of their faces–
these blossoms that are the hearts
of the people of this world

translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson