Songs of Kabir · 86 of 100

LXXXV: My heart cries aloud for the house of my lover; the open road and the…

LXXXV III. 90. naihar se jiyarâ phât re

MY heart cries aloud for the house of my lover; the open road and the shelter of a roof are all one to her who has lost the city of her husband. My heart finds no joy in anything: my mind and my body are distraught. His palace has a million gates, but there is a vast ocean between it and me: How shall I cross it, O friend? for endless is the outstretching of the path. How wondrously this lyre is wrought! When its strings are rightly strung, it maddens the heart: but when the keys are broken and the strings are loosened, none regard it more. I tell my parents with laughter that I must go to my Lord in the morning; p. 132

Insight · 2

The abandoned wife longing for her husband's city. In Indian poetry this is the viraha motif — separation as the condition for realization. The open road and the roof are all the same to her. The palace has a million gates, but there is a vast ocean between. The line about the lyre — "when its strings are rightly strung, it maddens the heart" — is Kabir's way of saying that human longing, when rightly tuned, carries its own answer. The longing is not a problem to solve. It is the song.Viraha doctrine in Jayadeva's Gita Govinda.

My heart cries aloud for the house of my lover; the open road and the shelter of a roof are all one to her who has lost the city of her husband. Notice the collapse. Once the beloved is gone, shelter becomes irrelevant — the roof and the road are indistinguishable. The intensity of longing in viraha poetry has this structure: the loss of one specific thing unmakes the whole organized life. Petrarch's Laura, when she was gone, similarly dissolved his Tuscany into featureless grief. Everything becomes the same because nothing is what was wanted.Petrarch, Rime Sparse on post-Laura grief; Gita-Govinda Sarga 3 on Radha's viraha.

They are angry, for they do not want me to go, and they say: "She thinks she has gained such dominion over her husband that she can have whatsoever she wishes; and therefore she is impatient to go to him." Dear friend, lift my veil lightly now; for this is the night of love. Kabîr says: "Listen to me! My heart is eager to meet my lover: I lie sleepless upon my bed. Remember me early in the morning!"