Peter Lucas Hulen

• hulenp@wabash.edu      

Kabir

• R U M I
  • The Worm's Waking
  • The Guest House
  • The Waterwheel
  • This We Have Now
  • The Sunrise Ruby
  • I Have Such a Teacher
  • Only Breath
  • The Arc of Your Mallet
  • Come to the Orchard in Spring
  • Say I Am You
• H A F I Z
  • The Sun Never Says
  • When You Can Endure
  • If You Don't Stop That
  • Some of the Planets are Hosting
  • For Three Days
• K A B I R
  • Take a Pitcher
  • While You Are Alive
  • Wake Up
  • What You Have Lived Through
  • The Breath Inside the Breath
  • It Was Inside
  • It Still Holds On
  • A Secret One Inside
  • Inside the Body

Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world
I hold to, and keep spinning out!

I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day that the cloth was well woven.

So I bought some burlap, but I still
throw it elegantly over my left shoulder

I pulled back my sexual longings,
and now I discover that I'm angry a lot.

I gave up rage, and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.

I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
and now I am proud of myself.

When the mind wants to break its link with the world
it still holds on to one thing.

Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!



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