The Light of the Sun and Moon
XVII. II. 61. (p. 60)
The light of the sun and the moon and the stars is bright here.
The melody of love swells up,
and the heart moves to the beat
of alternating attachment and detachment.
Day and night the music of praise goes on,
filling the horizon with sound.
Kabir says, The Beloved shines forth like lightning.
Do you know how each moment of time
performs its adoration of eternity?
Waving rows of lights, the universe sings day and night.
There are hidden banners, and secret places,
And the sound of unseen bells is heard.
Kabir says: The adoration never ceases,
and the One who Made it All is at home.
The whole world works and makes its mistakes,
but few are those lovers who know the Beloved.
They know, those lovers who mingle in their hearts
the double currents of love and detachment,
like the merging of two rivers.
In their hearts flow the sacred waters day and night,
and the round of birth and death is brought to an end.
There is sublime rest in the Invisible Spirit.
To enjoy that rest, join it.
Joy is an ocean with waves surging through it,
the sound of the surf carries for miles.
A flower blooms there without water,
And Kabir’s heart drinks its nectar.
A flower blooms at the rotating axis of the universal wheel
Few are those who know its delights.
Music surrounds it, and there the heart swells with the waves
of the infinite sea.
Kabir says: Dive into that ocean! You will be washed clean!
The cravings of the five senses are quenched there,
and the three forms of misery are not found.
Kabir says: This is all the sport of the Unattainable One.
Look within, and behold how the moon-beams
of that One, shine in you.
Life and Death move to a rhythmic beat.
Rapture bursts forth, and all space is radiant.
The music from the chords no one plays is heard
it is the music of the three worlds loving each other.
version of Kabir by Lorin Roche. Working from Tagore’s 1915 Songs of Kabir.