Sri Aurobindo
Collected Poems
CWSA.- Volume 2
Part Four. Calcutta and Chandernagore
Poems Written
in 1910 and Published in 1920 – 1921
Kama
(According to one idea Desire is the creator and sustainer of things,– Desire and Ignorance.
By losing desire one passes beyond the Ignorance, as by passing beyond Ignorance one loses desire; then the created world is surpassed and the soul enters into the Divine Reality.
Kama here speaks as Desire the Creator, an outgoing power from the Bliss of the Divine Reality to which, abandoning desire, one returns, ānandaṃ brahmaṇo vidvān, possessing the bliss of the Brahman.)
O desolations vast, O seas of space
Unpeopled, realms of an unfertile light,
Grow multitudinous with living forms,
Enamoured of desire! I send My breath
Into the heart of being, and the storm
Of sweet attraction shall break up its calm
With quivering passionate intensity
And silence change to a melodious cry,
And all the world be rose. Out of My heart
Suns shall flame up into the listless1 void,
And the stars wheel in magic dances round
Weaving the web of mortal life. For I
Am love, am passion; I create the world.
I am the only Brahma. My desire
Takes many forms; I change and wheel and race,
And with Me runs creation. I preserve,
For I am Love. I weary of Myself,
And the world circles back into the Vast.
Delight and laughter walking hand in hand
Go with Me, and I play with grief and pain.
I am the dance of Krishna, I the dance
Of Kálí2. Might and majesty are Mine,
And yet I3 make the heart a child at play,
The soul of things a woman full of bliss.
Hunger and Thirst, arise and make the world!
Delight, go down and give it strength to live!
O Ether, change! O Breath of things, grow full
Of the perpetual whirl! Break out, O Fire,
In seas of magic colour, infinite waves
Of rainbow light! Thou, liquid element,
Be sap, be taste in all created things
To please the senses. Thou, O solid earth,
Enter into all life, support the worlds.
I send forth Joy to lure4 the hearts of men,
I send forth Law to harmonise and rule.
And when these things are done, when men have learned
My beauty, My desirability, My bliss,
I will conceal Myself from their desire
And make this rule of the eternal chase,
“They who abandon Me, shall to all time
Clasp and possess; they who pursue, shall lose.”
Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 5.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 625 p.
1 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: pitiless
2 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: Kali
3 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: I can
4 1972 ed. SABCL, vol.5: cheer