The Dawning Godhead The stings of death occur less often now As I towards some silent grandeur move And healing streams of peace within me flow Quickening the universal love. Mind cannot grasp the need for body's fall, Revolts at human suffering and pain, The soul's desire to leave it would forestall, Uncertain if its consciousness remain Beyond the final breath, the fated hour, Or if it turn to dust beneath the stars. The spirit knows the form is but a flower That dies to be reborn and from the scars Of earth's travail enlightenment shall come. The soul incarnate cannot disappear, With every birth assumes a brighter home,

Before Time's Done - To Mary Helen I walked upon love's path enfolding thee, A soul that seemed at times too rare a gift For one as I who lived so vitally, A child embracing Nature's vast uplift. But then the heart recalls the joy of days Among the laughing flowers, kindly trees, Communicants with Nature in her ways And moments filled with happiness and ease. We marvelled at the brilliant flare of sky Appearing as the red sun disappears Or a lone bird's notes of soulful ecstasy When all the multi-coloured morning nears. I'll meet thee once again before time's done, Thy shining soul illumining my sight As stars

For Mary Helen 2/18/02 Beloved Soul Departing O sovereign of my soul the dreadful fight Is ended now, all grief She will dismiss, All sorrow dies in us for in Her light Pain is not and all is conscious bliss. Thy dimming eyes that held the light of seers, Thy lips that spoke but rarely yet with ease In measured words from immemorial spheres Are silenced in His deep eternal peace. Friend, sacrificant, companion, wife Who cast on all thy wide and luminous gaze A last long look on all the joy of life, Now sweetly sleep beyond our troubled days.

Wonders And Beatitudes Untold It hangs on the horizon warm and bright A golden agate in the eye of night. Trees in splendour burn, the woods alive With autumn-song earth alone can give And knowing this my spirit shall survive Irreparable loss and deepest grief. My soul on waters floating as a leaf On streams of consciousness I hardly know, Towards oceans of felicity I go The force of God holds me in its tow. I pass by banks of beauty flower-strewn And fields of youth where memories in ruin Lay scattered and my dreams unrealised, The music of the stars my heart surprised In soul's deep chambers sounds I recognized

Bud of the Mystic Rose The scattered leaves are left alone Lying where they fell, The grass unkempt, no twig or stone Removed, the crows rebel Against my presence in the glass. Mallard families fly And hawks perform a circling pass, Watchers of the sky. I have become an enigma's knot Unknowing and sadly, blind, A speck or insubstantial dot, A dull unconscious mind That struggles vainly to no avail To grasp such tragedy, Each test along the Way I fail, Night my company. All is strange and strangely still A dark and yawning gap, Absent of the driving will, Caught in memory's trap. How long this e

Haiku in the Ashram Disciples kneel And offer prayers Parrots screech a litany. Disciples cross Crowded streets Lost in reveries of God. In the Dining Hall Elder sadhak's Snow-white beard Stained with yellow dal.

Stasis I weep an old man's tears So quickly do I age, Old beyond my numbered years And on this dimming stage I walk by sorrow hailed In the uncompassed night, The will to seek abruptly failed As failed the inner sight. All joy has fled the heart As my beloved's breath, Dying I held her body close And felt the chill of death Upon those cherished limbs, Yet could not feel her pain As she traversed alone those spheres Denied to mortal men. And now the iris bloom And fragrant peonies flush The garden is a wonder-loom, Every tree and bush A pedestal for song. In this enamoured air One cannot hold a sadness lon

Beloved Soul Departed - For Mary Helen What gentleness of spirit wedded me To heights alone my being could not scale, What miracle of occult chemistry United us through all our life's travail? Threaded though the fabric of my days A love that turned my coarse-spun thread to gold A light that in the denseness of my ways Held bright and true its gracious gifts untold. For we have truly lived and truly loved Beyond desire and the body's need, Together towards the Infinite Secret moved, The flowering in man of Godhead's seed. O soul so pure who all my days have blessed Peace shall on thy pain-filled bosom rest.

The Glorious Renaissance We come to Thee mendicants of Grace Who hold false claim to everything we own, O Avatar of the golden Way What grandeur's seed in earth Thy hand hast sown, The world to save from man's destructive rage. Allured to darkness and satanic guile Though Presences divine await his call All sacred things his blood-lust would defile. Yet Thou hast come to temper coarsened steel And hone the blade to shore through evil's chain, Return man to his heritage of love, Reclaim the earth for spirit's sole domain. Stronger now the voice within our depths Exhorts us to be masters of our fate, And from the wellsprin

Instrument of Life A heavy gravitation's dissembling force Threatens to dissolve this house of flesh, Shatter the frail remains of skeletal mind Or press into some purgatorial night This withered empty form now love has fled. All hangs beclouded in unsubstantial air Where once the sun so brightly did bestrew Our world with flowers, canopied with trees Our carpeted path until untimely death Divided twain no earthly force could part. And now compelled by tears of loss I drift In penitential nights and frustrate days Benumbed by sorrow and by grief belayed. And yet, despite the darkness of the days, Amid the movement of mechanic