Kabir: The Moon Shines

This poem by the mystic and weaver Kabir was translated by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.  As a side-note, Hazrat Inayat Khan and Tagore were contemporaries, although Tagore was some twenty years senior;  Hazrat Inayat mentioned Tagore from time to time in his lectures, and when Inayat was based in Calcutta, Tagore was living not far away in the little village of Shantiniketan, but there is no record of them having met. 

The Moon Shines in My Body

The Moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it;
The Moon is within me, and so is the Sun.
The unstuck drum of eternity is sounded within me, but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the ‘I’ and the ‘Mine’, his works are as naught;
When all love of the ‘I’ and the ‘Mine’ is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit; when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but it seeks it not within itself; it wanders in quest of grass.

Tr. Rabindranath Tagore

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