Oh terrible, beloved! A poet's loving
Is a restless god's passionate rage,
And chaos out into the world comes creeping,
As in the ancient fossil age.

His eyes weep him mist by the ton,
Enveloped in tears he is mammoth-like,
Out of fashion. He knows it must not be done.
Ages have passed-he does not know why.

He sees wedding parties all around,
Drunken unions celebrated unaware,
Common frogspawn found in every pond
Ritually adorned as precious caviare.

Like some Watteau pearl, how cleverly

Oh friend, I love you, think this over
carefully! If you are in love,
then why are you asleep?

If you have found him,
give yourself to him, take him.

Why do you lose track of him again and again?

If you are about to fall into heavy sleep anyway,
why waste time smoothing the bed
and arranging the pillows?

Kabir will tell you the truth: this is what love is like:
suppose you had to cut your head off
and give it to someone else,
what difference would that make?

O Ever-forgetful!
Instead of bringing back nectar
from the Himalayas
you came back drinking
Shiva's deadly poison!
Why did you
love this earth so deeply?
Gods, therefore, play their trumpets
welcoming you into Heaven!

[Original: Arghyo; Translation: Sajed Kamal]

Of all the loves the heart can hold
The love of woman's first;
It was this one love that we had
Or e'er the world was cursed.
Then other loves — our passions — threw
Their shadows on the brain,
And like ill weeds they grew and grew
Amid the golden grain.
Ah! woman's love's the one thing true
In a world of lures and lies,
As if it were man's heaven that had
Survived his paradise!
Our other loves are but the dross
That to the soul must cling
Till we've forgot life's every loss
In Love's remembering.

The love of Christ, poor I! may touch upon;
But 'tis unsearchable. O! there is none
Its large dimensions can comprehend
Should they dilate thereon world without end.
When we had sinned, in his zeal he swore,
That he upon his back our sins would bear.
And since unto sin is entailed death,
He vowed for our sins he'd lose his breath.
He did not only say, vow, or resolve,
But to astonishment did so involve
Himself in man's distress and misery,
As for, and with him, both to live and die.
To his eternal fame in sacred story,

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!

He is found in human fashion, death and sorrow here to know,

When I do this begin to apprehend,
My heart, my soul, and mind, begins to bend

To God-ward, and sincerely for to love
His son, his ways, his people, and to move

With brokenness of spirit after him
Who broken was, and killed for my sin.

Now is mine heart grown holy, now it cleaves
To Jesus Christ my Lord, and now it leaves

Those ways that wicked be; it mourns because
It can conform no more unto the laws

Of God, who loved me when I was vile,
And of sweet Jesus, who did reconcile

I would unto my fair restore
A simple thing:
The flushing cheek she had before!
Out-velveting
No more, no more,
On our sad shore,
The carmine grape, the moth's auroral wing.

Ah, say how winds in flooding grass
Unmoor the rose;
Or guileful ways the salmon pass
To sea, disclose;
For so, alas,
With Love, alas,
With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes.

This man knew out the secret ways of love,
No man could paint such things who did not know.
And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian,
And you are here, who are ‘The Isles’ to me.

And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.

When you are very old, at evening

You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,

Humming my songs, ‘Ah well, ah well-a-day!

When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.’

None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,

Albeit with her weary task foredone,

But wakens at my name, and calls you one

Blest, to be held in long remembering.



I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid

On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,

While you beside the fire, a grandame grey,