Kabir - The New Dawn Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

My friend, when I was ignorant
my teacher showed me the inner path:
then I abandoned rituals. Who'd want
superstition in place of faith?

Discovering streams of living water,
I no longer bathed in the holy rivers;
no longer worshipt Shiva's dauter,
nor thought a statue could deliver.

I ceased to clothe myself in dust
or think austerities would serve
to mortify or conquer lust;
let alone suppress that nerve.

The gift of life demands a gift:
yet what is not that clear at first.
We seek by rules to heal the rift
twixt heart and mind, to quench our thirst -

Yet this is not the gift that answers:
nothing else but full surrender
to the inner peace that dances
all life onward is the mender.

Then I saw that I was mad …
if all society was sane.
Friends all agreed I must be bad
to unsettle rules they thought were plain.

Yet, as far as I could see,
all ills arose from constant action:
noone simply sought to be,
or cared at all for introspection.

The simple key, my teacher taught,
was that the earth and every life-form
is indivisible: which ought
to be respected as the norm.

Each is part of me, the greater
whole is but myself writ large.
So I must learn, now or later,
to let this greater self take charge

Slowly we learn to hear the silence
that calls us to the heart of earth,
and there alone can see how violence
can never lead us to rebirth.

We cannot end the wars that rage,
but disengaging from such sorrows
we can help to turn a page
that ushers in that longed-for morrow.

And thus a sacred equilibrium
may flow anew throu human hearts:
its channels the ultimate mysterium
where we, the whole, are but a part.


Original poem by the 15thC mystical Bengali poet Kabir (Bk1: 22) , translated by Rabindranath Tagore and Kshiti Mohan Sen (#35) . Versed bv MMS 1/12/10