Kabir was a 15th-century mystic poet and weaver of Varanasi, whose blunt, unadorned verses move between Hindu and Sufi devotion and still feel startlingly alive six centuries later. This is a small selection of his poems, given voice.
Kabir is believed to have lived in Varanasi in the 15th century, raised in a family of Muslim weavers while immersed in the devotional Hindu culture of the city around him. Almost nothing about his life is documented with certainty; what survives is the poetry attributed to him, passed down orally for generations before being written down.
His verses — often called dohas and padas — refuse easy categorization, moving fluidly between Hindu and Sufi devotional language and frequently criticizing empty ritual in favor of direct, unmediated experience of the divine. He is claimed as a foundational voice by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs alike; his poems appear in the Guru Granth Sahib.
Kabir’s poetry has come down through translation and oral tradition rather than a single authoritative text, which is part of why it continues to be rendered and re-rendered — including here — in so many different voices.