Amal Kiran’s poems on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Dear Friends,

Amal Kiran has expressed, through his poems, how he has evolved from an atheist in his youth to one of the greatest sadhaks of the Integral Yoga. In his poems, an invitation is obtained – to share his creative bliss and his world of beauty. And when he is not writing about the outer or the inner worlds, he is writing about his Gurus, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; after all, his entire worlds (inner and outer) revolve around them only.      

As the last installment of our series of tributes on Amal Kiran we are presenting a small bouquet of poems composed by him on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. 

With warm regards,

Anurag Banerjee

Founder,

Overman Foundation. 

                                               *

                                       Sri Aurobindo

                     All heaven’s secrecy lit to one face

                     Crowning with calm the body’s blinded cry—

                     A soul of upright splendour like the noon.

                     But only shadowless love can breathe this pure

                     Sun-blossom fragrant with eternity—

                     Eagles of rapture lifting flickerless

                    A giant trance wide-winged on golden air.

 

                                        The Master

                      Bard rhyming earth to paradise,

                      Time-conqueror with prophet eyes,

                      Body of upright flawless fire,

                      Star-strewing hands that never tire—

                      In Him at last earth-gropings reach

                      Omniscient calm, omnipotent speech,

                      Love omnipresent without ache! 

                      Does still a stone that cannot wake

                      Keep hurling through your mortal mind

                      Its challenge at the epiphany?

                      If you would see this blindness break,

                      Follow the heart’s humility—

                      Question not with your shallow gaze

                      The Infinite focused in that face,

                      But, when the unshadowed limbs go by,

                      Touch with your brow the white football:

                      A rhythm profound shall silence them all!

 

                            Tennis with the Mother       

                          She seems but playing tennis—

                          The whole world is in that game!

                          A little ball she is striking—

                          What is struck is a huge white flame

                          Leaping across time’s barrier

                          Between God’s hush, man’s heart,

                          And while the exchange goes on speeding

                          The two shall never part.

 

                          In scoring the play’s progress

                          The result of minds that move,

                          One word in constant usage

                          Is the mystic syllable “Love”.

                         And the one high act repeated

                         Over and over again

                         By either side is “Service”

                         And it never is done in vain.

                         For, whether defeat or triumph

                         Is the end, each movement goes

                         Soulward: through this short pastime

                         Eternity comes more close!

                                                                    

                         The Signature: Sri Aurobindo 

                     Sharp-hewn yet undertoned with mystery,

                     A brief black sign from the Incommunicable

                     Making the Eternal’s Night mix with our day

                     To deepen and deepen the shallow goldenness

                     We hug to our heart! Laughing whip-lash of love

                     That leaves a wonder-weal holding bright secrets

                     Within its snake whose coils are centuries

                     But whose straight sweep is the backbone of One Bliss!

 

                     The characters go flaming up and down

                     With all time’s venture twixt two ecstatic ends.

                     Clutching with gentle finger our dumb desire

                     A slanting full-bodied soar loops a firm loop

                     Of light around some lone  invisible peak—

                     Followed by steady twin strokes toward the same goal,

                     Yet smooth and statured close to the human heart.

                     Then one curve-straightening gracefully girdled stance,

                     A peace and pulchritude and potency,

                     A slender pyramid chasing a viewless line

                     Within, to an uprightnoonthat knows all truth.

                     Soon from the girdle a quick smiling leap

                     Across, spaced with a pair of vertical dreams

                     Still hinting unfallen heights, and then the term

                     Of all this labour and rapture in a full sweet circle,

                     Lackless, complete with godhead boundless in a point.

                     But, never a stagnant splendour, it casts a hook

                     Answering the curl before, with which the Name

                    Of the Nameless unwound in the hours, by a curl behind

                    Downward to dig and drag the dark Divine

                    Out of some heaven made hell, the Abyss that is All!

                                                                                                           

                    At the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo

                  Majestic master of the immutable Light,

                  Love like a universe thronged within your heart:

                  Brooding in silence across lonely years

                  On secret heavens a-dream in infinite hell,

                  You found the hammer to break the Dragon’s sleep

                  And free from burying black the fallen stars.

                  But from each throb of God kindled in earth

                  You flung a human heart-beat out of Time:

                  You shortened your sovereign life to greaten the dust.

                  Your body, dropped from your spirit’s hold on high,

                  Lays the foundation of a clay-built sky!

 

                 Always the Light came down from the limitless blue,

                 Gold gushing through the head to a heart God-drunk.

                 Now from the soul’s sleep rose one dazzling wave,

                 Uttering a secret of eternity locked

                 In caves dumbfounded with a vast black bliss.

                 It say how sheer divinity grew dust,

                 The miracled love which left the heart of the sun

                 And crouched with folded fire below Time’s feet

                 To give huge wings to the atom’s reverie.

                 The surge of light lifted our bodies up

                 As though in laughing answer to heaven’s leap down

                 Into the poisoning space of bone and flesh,

                 Earth now was ready to enter infinitude.

                 A blind snake that had swallowed all the stars

                 Unrolled a boundless mystery flecked with flame

                 And undulated shining centuries.

                 But none riding the rapture of the glow

                 Saw the still King of the new life’s luminous realm

                 Tamer and charmer of mortality’s night—

                 One Heart whose deep on gold-dense deep of love

                 Measured the abyss whose cry is the whole world’s death!

                                                   *

4 Replies to “Amal Kiran’s poems on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

  1. Following is an extract from a talk by C.V. Devan Nair titled “Sri Aurobindo and the Tomorrow of the Earth” given at the Savitri Solar Dome, Creston, Colorado, USA on August 15, 1994.

    “I had greatly regretted not having had Sri Aurobindo’s personal darshan. I had been busy nurturing a political revolution in the years when he still walked our planet.

    “Nonetheless, a wonderful poem by Sri Aurobindo’s foremost poet disciple, K.D. Sethna (whom he had named Amal Kiran–The Clear Ray), came as a near substitute for the actual darshan. It is simply titled–The Master.

    “When I first read this poem, a profound gratitude welled up in my deepest heart. It was as if Amal’s lines gave me the much-coveted darshan of the Time-conqueror with prophet eyes, and I felt a benediction on my brow from that white footfall. And I said in my heart: “Thank you, dear Amal, thank you!”

    World Union Magazine,
    Vol: XXXVI, No. 1, March 1995 issue, pp. 17-18.

  2. I never had the opportunity of seeing the master and the mother.I am thankful,as the poems have provided an opportunity to have darshan of Sri.Aurobindo and the mother.

    P.R.Redy

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