TO 00: Time halts to applaud the great Symphony
The present narrative in 40 stanzas composed in August 1998 was first published in my book Passing Moments. While posting it on the Mirror of Tomorrow I have taken the opportunity to lightly revise it at places. The extensive use and adaptation of Google Images to illustrate some of the themes is the added feature. The narrative concludes with the following stanzas describing the work the Protagonist came to do here.
Even his body’s cells shone
As if countless suns were lit;
The Transcendent’s powers he housed
Where purple majesties sit.
To him thoughts came in serene
Intuitions from the original fount;
Calm words he spoke were words
That had strength death to
surmount.
Truth’s abidingnesses he affirmed
In mortality’s devious ways,—
Made his breast a diamond cup
To hold its bliss, its rain and
rays.
Nightly aeons had elapsed
For the day of all-love to dawn;
Now in its great resplendence
The wonder of wonders moves on.
Mortal birth he lifted to the sun
And the Will of the High in it
willed;
A presence leaned down and things
Promised long ago got fulfilled.
Time’s Opuscule—by RY Deshpande
Exists no more the house
That held once my pain and grief;
And I have left shadows behind,
Worldly joys that are brief.
TO 01: Welcome ruin of the house of pain and
grief
Instead I hear deeper sounds
Coming from intimate solitude,—
Burdened with tranquil thoughts
Half-visible half-understood.
TO 02: Deeper sounds coming from intimate solitude
O the marvel! in my little garden
Heap up flaming hues, grow flowers;
Their fragrance is gentle and true,
Smiles those of blossoming hours.
TO 03: In my garden heap up flaming hues
Inner infinities awake,
And one by one the radiant gods;
Arrival of the immortal birth
My heart applauds and applauds.
TO 04: Applauding the awakened infinities
“What more, what more be done?”
Softly asks in its victory my soul;
To live a dream in embodied dream
Is flame-rapture of its dream-goal.
Maybe long ago I was surrounded
By animal wants, and gluttonous
men;
Unkindnesses had been my friends,
And ingratitude, and the other ten.
TO 05: …and the other ten
Torture and sorrow, failure, defeat,
A ship tossed by the violent storm,—
That had been my fate all through,
That the opprobrium, the norm.
On thorny bushes of my days
Used to sit birds but without a
song;
It was a helpless wistful sight,
Weary spectacle perhaps for too long.
TO 06: Thorny bushes and birds without songs
A ghost would go from place to place
With cyberic shells around its
neck;
A string of horoscopes fashioned
Memories its dead rams to bedeck.
TO 07: A ghost would go from place to place
I was alone,—in pain of sleep,
Hoodwinked by some blind image;
My thoughts bore weird bleary doubts,
My fondnesses pride of bygone age.
Yet my fearless martyr spirit
Had cried: “For freedom I yearn,
Freedom from that deathful habit;
Yes! in me new fires must burn.
TO 08: Sufi’s martyrdom for his beliefs
I cannot be fettered to passions,
Be bound to silly nothing’s will,
My tale not an idiot tale of rounds,
Of a dull bullock tied to the mill.
I know why I have chosen to be
In this world though full of gloom;
The cave in which at present I live
Needn’t remain an old cave of doom.
Eagerly so I set afloat at dusk
Clay-lamps on the stream of time;
And the currents carry them
To ocean-hush in hastening chime.
TO 09: Clay-lamps on the stream of time
In my temple a thousand bells ring,
And a thousand eyes look at the
One;
O the chant of many such worships,
All the rays turned towards the sun!
TO 10: In my temple a thousand bells ring
I see keen ardour has to wake up
And rush like a speckled serpent,—
With a moon-jewel on its hood
That the appalling spell be spent.
Now my heart is a buoyant haste
To the mystic sea that has no
shore;
It deepens into its own emerald
As if its fervent depths to explore.
TO 11: Mystic sea exploring its own emerald depth
Its rapids are rapidities of fulgence,
And quietude welcome companion;
Magic of night, miracle of day
Through its many moods run and run.
Calm inner strength holds me up,
The way the gods the sky uphold;
Days have become my march,
Nights winsome, faithful and bold.
TO 12: At the
I carry kindled hopes everywhere
And each star is a fiery promise;
Wherever I look, whatever I touch
All indeed a largesse of wonder is.
O the silent metaphor of life,
Glad traveller of eternity!
The sound of your feet echoes
Even before begins the journey.
TO 13: O the silent metaphor for life
Bring forth the soul of joy,
And bright flowers of the spring;
The wind will be soft and scented,
Sweet on trees the birds will sing.
The rivers will swell all-where,
And happy flames to sky ascend;
Whatever ought to be true will be,
And the gods’ long anguish end.”
TO 14: Whatever ought to be true will be
But there was a nobler martyrdom,
Luminous, godly, greater than mine;
It threw itself into a splendid fire
And blazed in that realness's sign.
It gathered its many riches,
Gold piling upon gold infinity;
Held all that back from its sight
To discover the real’s reality.
TO 15: To discover the unknown infinity
Out of its unknowable self
It made room for the vast night to
be,
Lighted surprises of the stars
In creative dazzle of its ecstasy.
TO 16: “I made an assignation with the Night.”
On a speedy stream it set
Amazement of a universe afloat;
Gladly in that silver rush
Sailed time’s spirit,—like a little boat.
TO 17: Time’s spirit moved like a little boat
Emerald-blue of the waters
Made furrows of red and gold;
Along its widening banks
Flourished a mystery that is
sevenfold.
A godhead came upon earth
Keeping aside the glory of his
past;
Left deathless life behind
His crimson seeds in death to cast.
TO 18: His crimson seeds of love
Persuading his soul to woo
Forbidding horror of dubious fate,
Of falsehood in all things,
He crashed into the dim cheerless gate.
TO 19: Horror of dubious fate
There is a wisdom pure and vast,
Of yore in white blaze of the sun;
A world-heart beats in world-thrill
And in every heart is its love won.
TO 20: White Blaze
In the silence of his spirit
A defeatless force is ever at work;
In the bright triumph of his joy
No evil can lie, no suffering lurk.
A might holding many mights,
And opulence of the triple name,
Chose to walk in human steps
For the Almighty hilltop-shrine to claim.
TO 21: Hilltop Shrine:
In magnificence of his intent
To build a house for the Unborn,
Of his self made a sacrifice which
Tall and tongueless flames adorn.
Alone in wideness of God
He lived God’s august work to do;
Immeasurable silence witnessed
In Matter’s womb birth of the true.
TO 22: House for the unborn
Even his body’s cells shone
As if countless suns were lit;
The Transcendent’s powers he housed
Where purple majesties sit.
To him thoughts came in serene
Intuitions from the original fount;
Calm words he spoke were words
That had strength death to surmount.
TO 23: Intuitions came from original founts
Truth’s abidingnesses he affirmed
In mortality’s devious ways,—
Made his breast a diamond cup
To hold its bliss, its rain and
rays.
Nightly aeons had elapsed
For the day of all-love to dawn;
Now in its great resplendence
The wonder of wonders moves on.
Mortal birth he lifted to the sun
And the Will of the High in it
willed;
A presence leaned down and things
Promised long ago got fulfilled.
TO 24: Things promised got fulfilled
18/08/98
2:58 PM
Sri Aurobindo’s Sonnet that appears at TO 16 is as
follows:
The Pilgrim of the Night
I made an assignation with the Night;
In the abyss
was fixed our rendezvous :
In my breast carrying God's deathless light
I came her dark
and dangerous heart to woo.
I left the glory of the illumined Mind
And the calm
rapture of the divinised soul
And travelled through a vastness dim and blind
To the grey
shore where her ignorant waters roll.
I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime
And still that
weary journeying knows no end;
Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,
There comes no
voice of the celestial Friend,
And yet I know my footprints' track shall be
A pathway towards Immortality.