' Alone '...

"In the beginning was He alone, sufficient unto Himself:
the formless, colourless, and unconditioned Being.

Then was there neither beginning, middle, nor end;
Then were no eyes, no darkness, no light;
Then were no ground, air, nor sky; no fire, water, nor earth;
no rivers like the Ganges and the Jumna,
no seas, oceans, and waves.

Then was neither vice nor virtue;
scriptures there were not, as the Vedas and Puranas, nor as the Koran.

Kabir ponders in his mind and says,
'Then was there no activity:
the Supreme Being remained merged in the unknown depths of His own self.'

The Guru neither eats nor drinks, neither lives nor dies:
Neither has He form, line, colour, nor vesture.

He who has neither caste nor clan nor anything else --
How may I describe His glory?

He has neither form nor formlessness,
He has no name,
He has neither colour nor colourlessness,
He has no dwelling-place."




Kabir
in Songs of Kabir, LXXXI
Translated by Rabindranath Tagore
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915, p. 127-128