Spirit-Ship O intimate one who blows Chill greeting to my spine And lifts around my head Locks of serpentine, Laces my shaggy beard With whirling tide of sleet Or runs the valleys' breadths On stealthy cat-like feet, My hands are frozen blocks O tearer of the sea The ropes like irons burn O wind of misery. Wind of widows' tears Children watch and wait At windows pocked with rime, To inmost fears abate. O furnace of the east Whose devil-dance and dust With thy companion burn Earth's body to a crust Or suck from thirsty land The last sustaining drop Of life and in the sands Bury the human crop,

To Sri Aurobindo Homage and Prayer to the Avatar Though now his eyes bespeak a million woes And granite furrows line his time-worn face With one brief glance his healing force bestows Upon the seeking soul the Godhead's grace. Wider He than distant galaxies, Greater His light than the undying sun, Fount of all knowledge, fount of eternal peace Among the Avatars, the Chosen One. Ruler of omnipotence enthrone In every heart aspiring the Guest And as we march into the great Unknown Guide us on our path of Godward quest. For the world has darkness more than it can bear And men are blind or soon by evil led It

Beyond the Stone Cathedral of the Mind The silent multitude awaited Thee, A gathered prayer from lips of worship rose Then silence as upon the balcony A glance of God drew every seeker close. This world is an ineffable mystery With sage and seer disguised by human form, What gift supreme from Heaven's treasury Brought Thee to earth, man's future to transform? We the undeserving touch Thy feet Aware that only Grace can lift our kind, The fierce transfiguration to complete Beyond the stone cathedral of the mind. O Shakti mould our lives to Thy design, Infuse in us the fire and the will To rise above our pett

Flower Experience The precise camellia opening slow her bloom Petal by petal in loveliness reveals A hidden delight spun from Deity's loom To break in man the dull and clouded seals On eyes that would all Beauty's realms behold And hearts that yearn to open to new light, Souls that might both Nature and man enfold And rise above this narrow constrained sight To see the world as truly it was made, A dwelling place of love divinely true Where one needs neither darkness nor the shade Protecting ignorance that limits new Miraculous transcendences to come. Appearing now at vision's farthest edge Golden rays suffuse this earthly dome

Spirit-Songs What yet may be is written in God's book, Unread by human eyes, unknown to mind. I only know that on this earth awhile I bore the Infinite's gaze, the self-born's look My soul to know, the sunlit path to find, And hold within that vast supernal smile. Now I shall sing to Her my spirit-songs Borne on waves of sound from wonder's spheres, Compassionate infinity of grace To whom the angels bow, for whom earth longs And men, to wash away the stain of tears That we have etched upon our Mother's face.

Carved Image To see beyond the mental images And structured recollections of the dead Framed in sorrow through time's long passages That in our hearts absolved of fear and dread, Made pure by deep aeskesis of the mind, The will to quell desire, conquer death, Resolved that by this journey God defined In man shall rise in him and with his breath, Speak through tongue aware of consequence, No longer a channel for universal noise Where words are uttered void of inner sense And hidden the innumerable joys Waiting by the pathways of our grief; That he may come into this flesh and bone Transform by stealth, silent as a thief Who enters

The Sacred Thread Our lives are full with fleeting things And the emptiness that knowledge brings Unless we live and soul derive From deeper vaults of memory Essentially or mystically The reason that we live and strive Exhausting our humanity In death or in a world-ennui. Why do we lose the sacred thread And find in pleasure our daily bread? Fulfilment of the body's lust Leaves in its wake a hardened crust And in the winding sheets of mind Eternal spirit rendered blind.

Night By Clouds Unbound Starless sky, the desolate grandeur of night Merging with the dark and sombre hills, A firefly, small pinpoint of light That flits across my sight the moment fills Mid the unrelenting torrent of the rain. The rose-breasts sleep, jays and ladder-backs Await the morn to freely soar again For on this night the febrile lightning cracks And all is dimmed as an abandoned stage, No movement but the fiercely shrieking wind Lashing the black infinity with rage. I watch and in the shadows of my mind Tenuous threads through centuries of thought Quiescent wait my thinking to invade, Yet in this fragile h

By Miracle Beset Do not let her memory Even for an instant fade Her face for all eternity Is on the loom of God displayed. The measure of all things is love That bears us through the Void of night, A love divine in which we move And breathe and die is our delight. Earth's harmonies cannot be killed By apathy, indifference, Her knowledge is of greatness willed By some divine unerring sense Since first the light of dawn appeared And green burst through the barren stone When God from fragrant calyx peered At beauty's face that was His own. Give me never to forget Joy of sacrificial days, My life by miracle beset

For Mary Helen, Mother's Child As the Trembling Leaf And I await as the trembling leaf Anticipates the rain, the lovely ferns, Ancients of life on whom she lavished love, A sign, an augury for which my being yearns That I am well, – not thee, but my long soul Stretching beyond the windows of my cage, Not thee, in whom the Seraphim rejoice, Surrounding thee with heavenly entourage, Where pain is not nor any lagging thought, "What might have been?" All is and is to be, We cannot wrest the future from the past. Together awhile we strode an ecstasy Defined by golden trees, the lean of bluffs, Wayside blooms sparkling in