Lamps burn in every house,
O blind one! and you cannot see them.
One day your eyes shall suddenly be opened,
and you shall see: and the fetters of death will fall from you.
There is nothing to say or to hear,
there is nothing to do:
it is he who is living, yet dead, who shall never die again.
Because he lives in solitude,
therefore the Yogi says that his home is far away.
Your Lord is near: yet you are climbing the palm-tree to seek Him.
The Brahman priest goes from house to house
and initiates people into faith:
Alas! the true fountain of life is beside you,
and you have set up a stone to worship.
Kabîr says: ‘I may never express how sweet my Lord is.
Yoga and the telling of beads,
virtue and vice-these are naught to Him.’
