“To Be A Slave Of Intensity” by Kabir (translated by Robert Bly)

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you do not break your ropes while you're alive
do you think
that ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten ---
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


SOURCE: From The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir by Robert Bly.
From: Beacon Press; Reprint edition (February 1, 1993)