1
While you’re busy perfuming
Your body with sandal oil,
Someone else is chopping
The wood for your funeral.
A kite string in your hand
And paan dribbling from your mouth,
You forget that when you die
They’ll tie your body with a rope,
As one might truss up a common thief,
And leave it on the pyre
To burn. Can’t you see, says Kabir,
That Rama is the only truth,
Everything else a monstrous lie?
2
‘It take a man that have the blues so to sing the blues’
Leadbelly
O pundit, your hair-splitting’s
So much bullshit that I’m surprised
You still get away with it.
If parroting the name of Rama
Brought salvation,
Then saying sugarcane should sweeten
The mouth, saying fire burn the feet,
Saying water slake thirst, and saying food
Make you belch, as after a meal.
If saying money made everyone rich,
There’d be no beggars in the streets.
My back turned on the world,
You hear me singing of Rama and you smile.
One day, says Kabir, tied like a bundle,
You’ll be delivered to Deathville.
3
Death has them in its sights,
Both beggar and king.
Man’s life is a dancing shadow,
Amounting to nothing.
But the body’s a lake,
The soul a swan,
If the chemical on your tongue,
Says Kabir, is called Rama.
4
To get a big head
Is easy.
Food on the table
Cash in the pocket
And you walk with a swagger.
Be street-smart.
And you can rake in
Twice as much.
But money’s like the leaves
Of a forest’s trees.
You didn’t bring it with you when you were born,
It won’t go with you when you die;
Greater kings than Ravana
Have vanished in the blink of an eye.
Parents, children, wife,
You’ll leave them behind.
You must be mad, says Kabir,
Not to sing of Rama
And to screw up your life.
5
Twelve years were
To childhood lost;
Twenty to youth;
Middle age took care
Of the rest.
It’s too late
To have regrets.
You built an embankment,
But the lake had dried up;
You enclosed the field,
But there was no crop to save;
You ran out with the snaffle,
But after the horse-stealer
Had made off with the horse.
Bedridden with a stroke,
You make a clucking sound
And wish to make amends.
You’ll leave this world, says Kabir,
Empty-handed.
translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
