We Have Shared a Grace - For Mary Helen

O emptiness – where once a heart had stood

Young and glowing in the joy of youth,

Of one who lived within, deep within

And heroically faced the demons of the night,

Who found, leaving all the world behind,

This world of satisfaction and of ease,

At the far end of our spinning earth

One whom her longing soul would recognize,

The Mother of all sorrow and all joy

Whose holocaust still shall save the world.

Her soul led, the body acquiesced

And all the deep refinement of her birth

Was cast into the poverty and filth

Of suffering too deep to comprehend

And hopelessness the West had never seen.

Her spirit overwhelmed by death and pain

Returned again to live on safer shores

Awhile but then the call grew stronger still,

The Mother's smile, the sacred Ashram's peace

And then the day that Auroville was born.

Difficult and painful were the years

Of bare necessity, the torrid heat,

The illnesses and dangers of the way

She faced with calm goodwill, the soul's resolve.

Birth and the first twelve years of hard-won growth

And forces clashing, truth and falsehood mixed,

Those who yearned for power and control,

At every step a treachery that slayed

The spirit that would soar, the love She poured

Upon the bare eroded soil, the human core

That laboured in the cauldron of the days

Towards unity that often met defeat

In evil's den, fanaticism's field,

Or apathy, distrust and ignorance.

Of Mother's love, the vision that She gave

Of earth reborn to divinity

A city of peace and human unity,

A oneness embracing all diversity,

This hallowed land, chosen by the Lord,

To be the final refuge of the world.

When evil reigned the Mother's child returned

To work within the country of her birth,

A deeper plunge of self to find her Lord

In the still and silent place behind the heart.

And all the flowers she had loved and grown

Became her field of work, a loving toil,

For all her labour towards perfection grew

In compass of the spirit's harmony.

I know God's hand has led us all our days

And slowly consciousness and vision grew

And gratitude for many lifetimes led.

The deeper joys that sorrow could not taint

Nor cancer and the ultimate decree

Of weeks, then months, the surgeons knew

That barring miracle no chance remained.

Astonished when the miracle occurred

And months stretched into years, the time of God

Allowed for us to deeper seek His peace

And open to the kingdom of the Light

Commit our lives to tread the golden path.

So fearlessly she braced the dread disease

Her discipline a model to be seen,

A faith unshaken even in the pain

That came so suddenly, so swift, so fierce.

Another bond was formed between two souls,

A union of the spirit joined in love,

That would endure through all eternity,

The turning of the endless wheel of time.

As often in our home I held her close

And on her final day I sat by her

Reciting the mantras of our chosen way.

The words we spoke, the holiness we shared

Shall sing through all the births in years to come,

For we are Hers and steadily the soul

Grows closer to the sun of its desire.

The body is no more, yet she lives on,

Her spirit to find rest in higher spheres,

And I though now most empty, most alone

In grief I must allow to have its day,

I stand aside a witness of myself

To glean from sorrow's fields the grains of calm,

Prepare my soil to nurture heaven's balm,

To yield to sun and rain and not despair

Of storm or drought, all things to bear

In peace and gratitude, the Way is found,

For God has marked the earth His sacred ground

And in our midst there lives a higher kind

Recipients of the golden Supermind.

And we have shared a Grace so pure, so sweet

That surely will return us to Their Feet.