Collaboration - Journal of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
Summer 1995, Vol. 21, No. 1
THE POETRY ROOM
Four and
And you say each finger has its own consciousness,
Does it not take the five to form the one hand,
So the fingers question the hand.
Says fingers: Why must I stretch?
Why must I bend?
What for the means?
And what for the ends?
Says hand: Fingers never understand the fulfilling program.
These common actions produce strong grip.
We're not here to see through one another,
But to see one another through.
--Routheni
_____
I really missed this house of a thousand rooms.
Few I did visit, fewer I recall.
There are times I reopen some doors
that I thought to be barred.
I am led by a scent or by some word,
by the sound of the voice I loved the most.
Some rooms I could just glimpse,
filled with light, with no limits.
Someday I'll be allowed to inhabit them.
I know in a strange partial way
the people who live there,
the only way I know them.
The lady of the house, she sits in every chamber.
--Carlo Chiopris (translated from the Italian)
_____
How often I have been there to see you,
bitter at times or desperate,
blaming you for having taken me from a normal life
to initiate me instead, year after year,
to the incurable suffering of the world.
How many times you won me
and unveiled my true heart.
And then I said: forgive me,
I didn't understand,
I'm here, I'm here, I'm yours.
I asked you something I cannot write down,
you answered in a way
I do not even try to find words for.
I went on saying: I know, I know, I know.
--Carlo Chiopris (translated from the Italian)
_____
Flute-song
A slow flute-song ancient as Eastern hills
Draws its long and plaintive note,
Winds languidly encircling my soul
Stirring remembrances mellow with deep pain
And visions too frequent
Of loved ones too often lost,
And the haunting-depth of too long a life.
What deep purposes lurk in the reed
As the playerŐs breath gives it life, gives it a tone
Beyond the mere cycle of bamboo's growth and rot.
The evening sun bleeds into the sky,
The evening star is too hesitant,
Each steadied into the profound slowness of a message
musically unspoken.
Flute-song . . . answer to every mother's ache
For children gone before their time, speak
For all the unspoken, the true.
Flute-song . . . too pure for mere poignancy,
Too sheer even for pain . . .
Voice of silence
--Arvind R. Habbu
_____
Folded bent
This creative shape
I saw a dream
I saw the moon
I went in rocket
I saw the stream
They said I lived
I said I died
I see the sky
The mad man monk
His armor steel
I saw the eye
It glistens truth
It showed me shapes
It showed me life and breath
I saw the moon
In life and strength
It was half, it was full
I caught the glimpse
Of wedded earth
You know my being
Take me and be me
--Chitra Neogy
_____
The leaf of life
An unending stream
The crystal breath
A life and death
A sugar moment
Of prismed wealth
I saw the sky
I saw the moon
I saw the clouds
They entered in
You are God
You are child
You are mine
You are yours
Take my time
Let me free
I will walk
I will be
--Chitra Neogy