NOCTURNE My words would bring through atmospheres of calm The new moon's smile that breathes unto the heart Secrets of love lost in clay-captured kisses; The evening star like some great bird whose fury Dies to a cold miraculous sudden pause— Wings buoyed by sheer forgetfulness of earth; And oh that dream-nostalgia in the air, The sky-remembrance of dew-perfumed dust! I would disclose the one ethereal beauty Calling across lone fires and fragrances— But vain were music, vain all light of rapture That drew not sense a pathway to strange sleep Nor woke a passion billowing through the body In search of realms no eye-boat

AGNI JATAVEDAS (In the Rigveda, Agni, called "Jatavedas" or "Knower of births", is the divine Fire visioned in various occult forms as the secret urge of our evolution towards the perfect splendour that is the Spirit.) O smile of heaven locked in a seed of light— O music burning through the heart's dumb rock— O beast of beauty with the golden beard— O lust-consumer in the virgin's bed— Come with thy myriad eyes that face all truth, Thy myriad arms equal to each desire! Shatter or save, but fill this gap of gloom: Rise from below and call thy far wealth down— A straining supplicant of naked silver, A jar of dream,

GREEN TIGER There is no going to the Gold Save on four feet Of the Green Tiger in whose heart's hold Is the ineffable heat. Raw with a burning body Ruled by no thought— Hero of the huge head roaring Ever to be caught! Backward and forward he struggles, Till Sun and Moon tame By cutting his neck asunder: Then the heart's flame Is free and the blind gap brings A new life's beat— Red Dragon with eagle-wings Yet tiger-feet! Time's blood is sap between God's flower, God's root— Infinity waits but to crown This Super-brute. Sri Aurobindo's Comment

WORLD-POET With song on radiant song I clasp the world, +Weaving its wonder and wideness into my heart— But ever the music misses some huge star Or else some flower too small for the minstrel hand. No skill can turn all life my harmony. Perchance a tablet of magic mood will make The truth of the whole universe write itself But only when with mortal thoughts in-drawn I learn the secret time-transcending art: +Silence that, losing all, grows infinite Self ... Sri Aurobindo's Reply "The +marking indicates lines which are of the first poetic order. The ordinary mark indicates those which are excellent. The other lines not marked are

SKY-RIMS As each gigantic vision of sky-rim Preludes yet stranger spaces of the sea, For those who dare the rapturous wave-whim Of soul's uncharted trance-profundity There is no end to God-horizonry: A wideness ever new awaits behind Each ample sweep of plumbless harmony Circling with vistaed gloriole the mind. For the Divine is no fixed paradise, But truth beyond great truth—a spirit-heave From unimaginable sun-surprise Of beauty to immense love-lunar eve, Dreaming through lone sidereal silence on To yet another alchemy of dawn! The first version had for its last line: To yet another revelatory dawn

ANANDA Rapture that cuts away time-transient shows Like petals from the odour of a rose: One breath of luminous all-absorbing hush— So wide a love that nowhere need it rush: Calm ether of an infinite embrace— Beauty unblurred by limbs or longing face. Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Very beautiful. Higher and Illumined Minds rolled into each other with the Intuition to give an uplifting touch." Page-46

"OVERHEAD POETRY" POEMS WITH SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENTS Edited by K. D. SETHNA SRI AU ROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION PONDICHERRY First Edition : March 1972 March 1972 © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1972 Published by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA PUBLISHERS' NOTE As Sri Aurobindo's work in various fields comes more and more to be known, an increasing number of questions are put by earnest seekers. In the spher

GOD-SCULPTURE "No man to immortal beauty woke But by My music of stroke on stroke Should I disdain to hurt your deep Rigidities of clay-bound sleep, How would you bear a thrilled impress Of My unshadowed loveliness? Pain like a chisel I've brought to trace The death of pain upon your face: Each curve and line new-wrought shall be A tangible God-ecstasy. If earth's hard gloom I never broke With the keen fire of shaping stroke, Creation would forfeit its aim— To house the paradisal flame In no vague momentary mood But kindle with infinitude Rapture as of eternal stone! Must n

EXILE With you unseen, what shall my song adore? Though waves foam-garland all the saffron shore My music cannot mingle with their tone, Because a purer worship I have known. How shall I join the birds' delight of space, Whose eyes have winged the heaven of your face? Or with the rain urge blossoms to be sweet, When I have lost the altar of your feet? A lone tranquillity whose eyelids fall Is now my only voice, for thus I call Your godhead back: the gates of outwardness I shut and my lost rapture repossess— Your spirit in my spirit, deep in the deep, Walled by a wizardry of shining sleep. Sri Aurobindo's Comme

MUKTI What deep dishonour that the soul should have Its passion moulded by a moon of change And all its massive purpose be a wave Ruled by time's gilded glamours that estrange Being from its true goal of motionless Eternity ecstatic and alone, Poised in calm plenitudes of consciousness— A sea unheard where spume nor spray is blown! Be still, oceanic heart, withdraw thy sense From fickle lure of outward fulgencies. Clasp not in vain the myriad earth to appease The hunger of thy God-profundities: Not there but in self-rapturous suspense Of all desire is thy omnipotence! Sri Aurobindo's Comment "Congratulations! I