To Mother Our Lives Are Joined The pain and sorrow of all living things Thou couldst contain, by love transmute to bliss And all our anguished human sufferings To rapture lift and touch with Godhead's kiss. What prayer may issue from my lips unheard By Thee before the thought was born within, How shall I phrase the halting rhyme or word Or lines that have not Thee for origin? O Light that I have lived to see and love Pure within its burning altar-home To Thee my spirit cries, my longings move And to Thy call my soul replies, "I come." The centuries shall mark thy golden tread Upon this blue resilient mote in space,

She Never Called Me Narad She never called me Narad And rarely spoke my name, Her emphasis was always 'we' Our goals so much the same – To live at Mother's feet, Endure the fiery trial And all life's demons face defeat In the radiance of Her smile. But on her final day She ever so sweetly called Narad, when you pass this way – And then the life-force stalled. Death rang his hollow chimes And as her passing came I repeated one hundred and twenty times Sri Aurobindo's name.

Winter Winter with his hands of lethal skill Has stripped the final vestiges of green And sucked from leaves the living chlorophyll Till only barrenness and death are seen. Patient with autumn's fiery display And riotous flair of spring's extravagance One chill breath upon the verdant day And all reduced to bleak and frozen trance. His artist concept, nude and drab and drear, And palette filled with shades of white and grey, Stark paintings sign the ending of the year And beauty lost that once had lived a day In patience waits renaissance of the spring On his cold grave to dance and laugh and sing.

For Mary Helen At Their Beloved Feet Angelic spirits gladly welcomed her Who have no part of death or dark or pain, In sacred fields of earth she grew and bloomed And ever in their hearts she shall remain. One who in silent communion spread her love Across the bounteous seas of life and smiled Her brightness on the iris and the rose As Nature laughed by all her joy beguiled. Her body fought the fierce and perilous fight To move a closer step towards things divine, She died with Mother's name upon her lips, To Sri Aurobindo's care she did consign Her glowing soul, so beautiful, so sweet, And found her rest at their bel

Do Birds Fall Silent? Do the birds fall silent when we leave, Is the sun less bright because we dream Of night and on its bosom grieve. Are the mountains held in less esteem By souls who follow in our stead Is the fragrance of the forest less, Do new-born souls replace the dead, Does love rescind its tenderness Because death is and life must die? To manifest God and truly live We must forego the strident "I". By self-forgetting ourselves we give.

Rays of Hope It was as if all substance disappeared For in my dream I clasped your wraithlike form So fragile that in holding you I feared Your body would dissolve which yet was warm And supple yielding to my lightest touch. I asked you how I might be of some use, The love within my heart and soul was such That nothing you would ask I could refuse, But then I woke and weeping understood Embracing you was but a passing dream, Its meaning vague and all your lifelike mood A vision or an evanescent gleam Of joy once known that now is mine no more, A tenderness and sweetness as of flowers, A life divine our basis and the core That j

Erskine Lake A house of guns and swords and mounted game, The welcome smell of panelled rooms of pine, The Burgermeisters' home and Tanta's name I can recall but not the covert sign Of treachery that lay within those floors. And O, the garden where we'd run and hide And pluck the full and ripened fruit, the chores My father's boundless energies applied To ease the strain upon his elder kin. At the age of four we were too young to know Deceit and fraudulence as mortal sin And played unconscious in the evening glow, Wide-eyed saw the fish beneath the dock, Swam delighted in the fairy lake Open-mouthed watched the cuckoo-clock Stri

Do Not Grieve Grief is now companion of my days, Unwanted he comes, a solitary guest And in the unchecked openings betrays The heart to tears, the soul to troubled rest. Though a stranger he appears as bosom friend Recalling joys I shall not taste again, And sorrow's songs I cannot yet transcend, For one I loved who bravely bore her pain, Who cherished life, unwilling still to leave Though caught in the stealthy Hunter's mighty snare. I hear her voice beseech me, "Do not grieve," And catch her perfumed presence in the air. She walks with me, confidante and guide, Towards the Mother's Light where I move on And love no lingerin

This Faint Phenomena Called Soul What is this faint phenomena called soul Which rarely do we sense and hardly know, A portion of some enigmatic whole That merits no attention in the flow Of life, the rushing of its endless streams Inwhich we willingly participate. Yet sometimes we are visited by dreams, Impressions, thoughts on which we meditate Other than our daily cares and fears. And sometimes when a voice is softly heard, Turn from the tedious sameness of the years From far approaches catch the carrier Word.

Inviolable Rose When I allow myself to dream awake, If I allow myself to dream at all I dream of flowers and the joy they take At light in morning, rest at evening's fall. I see their blissful countenance and hue And often in the early day or late A fragrance sense, known only to the few Who open as the flowers, dedicate To the sun of their thought, their soul's desire, The bud that lies within awaiting bloom, A many-petalled chalice reaching higher Ever higher in that hidden room Where all prepares the ages to disclose The perfect and inviolable rose.