Above, Within This hour of dusk Thrills in my heart a cry for precious things: How wilt thou please, O life with so small wings, O thou great heap of straw and a grain of musk? Over me reigns The empire of a superhuman sleep Precious with secret plenitudes that keep A teeming twinkling infinite of musk-grains! Breathes far away That mystery measureless above all time. Will ever the Vast wake even here a chime Of heavenly gold transmuting common day? Heart within heart— Calls a wide garden sown in a mirrored sky, Deep day of some divine world-soul with eye On blossoming eye, dream-single though apart! O

Great Wings Great wings, one white and one of gold Our dreaming spirit must unfold, The wing of shadowless purity, The wing of power that cannot die. But life gains not this liberty Unless a wideness ever free Is the formless depth of what we are, A mystery standing near and far, An omnipresence of rapt air, No need to rush forth anywhere, An all-supporting breakless peace That makes the soul of form release Wings beyond earthly nights and days, And bears with cool invisible grace Their waft of gold-white victory: Godhead is only godhead by A soar of Self within Self-space. 9-6-48 Page-67

THE ADVENTURE OF THE APOCALYPSE The Adventure of the Apocalypse K. D. SETHNA SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE BOMBAY First published in 1949 by Sri Aurobindo Circle, 32 Rampart Row, Fort, Bombay 1 Printed in India at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry All Rights Reserved 154/49/500

-075_God^s whole secret.htm God's Whole Secret The strokes of time have left no scar on her: Death after death upbuilt a fairer face: Now God's whole secret buried within earth Laughs in the two sunflowers of her gaze. Out of a heaven haloing each hour She wakes the truth-gold in our limbs of lust: Intense with a glowing absolute of life She brings even dust the glory of being dust . 10-7-48 Page-105

Mirror and Knowledge All mirrors in which we seek the bliss Of our small self are an abyss At the bottom of whose night Is a mockery of light, A tiny stagnant pool Where darkles the flattened face, With gaping empty gaze, Of the demon and the ghoul. But when the Great Self glows Like a golden cosmic rose, The petals fanning out from one sweet core, No strangeness anywhere Remains for stare and stare Seeking to itself a door The central Eye of eyes Can shut in all-repose, For the Great Flower knows Its perfume of paradise. 9-5-48 Page-2

Let the Ear Read Read not with eye alone, Let the ear read: Then shall you see the lines Of rhythmic speed Gather and curve to form Bodies of gold— A glory that can never To the eye unfold Unless a hush, intent With wondering, Hears that unearthly sweetness Goldenly ring! Sight is the surface mind, Sound the deep heart: Until you catch in the poet's Magical art The throb and thrill and throe. Of this profound, The gods of unbearable beauty Are never found. Not when the brain goes dreaming, But when we kiss A night unknown and the heart Breaks with blind bliss,

Hidden Apocalypt Not the cool mind blinking with a million eyes But the hungry heart that struggles to see once With as intense a sight as its blindness now, Is the blaze that catches time and eternity. All things in a single glow suddenly break To an infinite harmony in the human breast: When the heart's hidden apocalypt cracks his cave Vision is no delight of heavens hung far— To see is to devour divinity! Through one great gaze the whole universe of truth Is drawn within by a tyranny of love That brooks no distance betwixt seer and seen. Colour becomes a laugh of inmost life— Red rapture, blue bliss, yellow ecstasy

Milk in Almighty Breasts Milk in almighty breasts for the magic babe Born of the cave of trance is the Light beyond! From teats of mystery to a tiny mouth Pass all the mantras: sages who burn wide Shrink to a blinded bliss in giant arms To drain the Whiteness hid in the highest blue! One breast the nectarous truth of eternity, One breast the honeyed secret of all time— Huge hemispheres that make a rapturous whole Of knowledge in the child-heart sucking both And rhyming its small throb to the vast thrill Of the single Heart behind two fullnesses! A gloom of God strewn with a million stars The sages view in silen

Vanishing Edges All forms have vanishing edges! Colour and line now seem To shade off ;a the farness Of an infinite dream! The mind awakes to a presence No eye can see— Enfolding every earth-shape With aura of mystery. Time-figures have grown portions Of a hidden world Ruling by utter quiet: Shiningly swirled In spaces which are viewless, They cry to me, "O sweep, Beyond our little thrillings, To the all-creative Deep, Breakless and self-complete— Bliss free of bound— One whole of truth forever, Needing no sound To relish its own nectar Of knowledge immense That

Front 8th May to 8th June A month has flown like some Archangel's form Dripping a light of God-drunk reverie. And I have lain aloof and still to see The truth-gold pinions of that singing storm. Men move with days; but I have reached a rest From where I view days moving wondrously Out of an east of crimson gaiety Unto a violet wisdom in the west! Even in the drowsy hours that ever fade Far and more far into a black beyond, The same Archangel's secret heart-beats chime, A dimness of divinest diamond. Rapture is all, because my mind is made One with a Mother Mystery above time. 8-6-48 Page-61