Songs of Kabir by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Listen carefully,Neither the Vedas Nor the Qur’an Will teach you this:Put the bit in its mouth,The saddle on its back,Your foot in the stirrup,And ride your wild runaway mind All the way to heaven.’’A lovely book of translations of the poetry of Kabir, a truly visionary egalitarian thinker of the fifteenth century, whose songs remain alive in the folk tradition of north India. In bringing Kabir to an English-speaking audience Arvind Krishna Mehrotra has made a major contribution to the global reach of that inspiring vision.’ – Amartya Sen’Kabir was a poet for whom the sacred was inseparable from the satiric, the erotic, the sardonic and the absurd, and he comes alive at last in English in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s translation that is simultaneously a work of long scholarship and a jazz performance of the Kabir tradition.’ – Eliot Weinberger’Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s new translation brings the poetry of Kabir to life in English for the first time. Not that others haven’t tried: Pound, Robert, Bly and most notably Rabindranath Tagore in 1915 . . . But it is Mehrotra who has succeeded in capturing the ferocity and improvisational energy of Kabir’s poetry.’ – August Kleinzahler in the New York Times