Editor’s Note: In the Book of the Month, this time we feature a book of poems by Nirodbaran. Titled ‘Sun Blossoms‘ this was published by Sri Aurobindo Circle (Bombay, 1947 edition). The poem titled ‘Soul’s Silence’ (p. 69) speaks of that deep yearning of a sādhaka for a profound and constant silence. And the other titled ‘One Moment’ (p. 23) reminds us how ephemeral that moment of deep Silence can be in which we connect with the Divine.
Silence of the being is the first natural aim of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 30, p. 79
Soul’s Silence
O SILENCE of the infinite Soul,
Settle in my heart;
Make each beat of its mortal hour
A fathomless part
Of thy unimaginable deep;
My growing mood,
A motionless inscrutable fire
Of thy solitude,
Unmarred by the foam of timeless waves
That rise and fall
Along a verge of wandering dream
Beyond earth’s call.
The luminous distances of life
Slowly retire
From the interruptions of dim thought
Into a higher
Existence, where for ever cease
All cry and stress
And vain shadows in a rhythmic sea
Of inwardness.
One Moment
IMMENSELY calm and most ineffably sweet
Is the regard of those half-blossomed eyes!
How gentle is the pressure of those hands
When the heart bows before her lotus-feet!
A moment’s touch—what founts of joy arise
Running through dull grains of my life’s dead sands
Like a cool stream where once never was shade!
As I stand rapt in that mysterious gaze,
My consciousness is hushed into a deep
Silence; being and thought and universe fade
Into oblivion; this earth’s prison maze
Where in our gilded chains we laugh and weep
Through Life’s unending Circles, day and night,
Falls off like a leaf torn by a short breath
Of wind; the gurge of violent Time is cast
Into the silence of a lone sky-height.
I look into those God-eyes that conquer death,
Oceans of love and tides of rapture vast
Mad with a drunkards joy I quaff and brim;
The finite for this one moment brief drinks
The Infinite.
One moment only, alas!
Times seizes and Space dungeons and the dream,
The deep spell breaks. I am left on the grey brinks
Of human consciousness weltering morass
Of a blind ignorance cresseted with desire:
A dark sea with a phosphorescent Fire!
For more: Poetry in Renaissance
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
