Peter Lucas Hulen

Kabir

Kabir
I have been thinking of the difference
     between water
and the waves on it. Rising,
water's still water, falling back,
it is water, will you give me a hint
how to tell them apart?

Because someone has made up the word
"wave," do I have to distinguish it
from water?

There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets in all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at with
     luminous eyes.



Robert Bly, Tr., Kabir: Ecstatic Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007)