Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Comments on the Work of Poets of the Ashram

Nirodbaran [4]

The breath of life is a flaming flame-mystery!,

It That circles round towards a hidden altitude,

Each A spark, a movement being a spark of eternity

And every its occult seed a veiled God-hood.

Creation is a shadow child of God-delight;

| Born from the illimitable hush seas of sound

And gains It turns to its primal state tranquil source in the

Infinite

Like a wave freed from time’s monotonous round.

Escaping from the monotone of Time’s round.

The mystic hues Light that shines in every heart

|| Climbs towards the an unknown solitary Sun

Where they are joined to their And joins its own immortal counterpart

And grows into a Accomplished in that timeless union.

Everything Thus all things born passes into a divine

Nothingness and begins to bear reach that single Bliss again

||| Whence they sprang like stars out of on a nebulous sky-line,

|||| A fathomless beauty within a sphere of pain.

This is really disappointing! Oh, the time it took! I am sure you will find plenty of hurdles.

There are indeed very difficult hurdles but I have leaped them all — only in the process the poem has got considerably reshaped. So, I don’t put lines except for the few that have remained almost as they were. The last line is magnificent — the others mostly needed a revision which they don’t seem to have got.

Day by day things are getting difficult, more than yoga, sir! My head will break one day! Be prepared, please!

Well, well, when the head is broken, a passage for a superior light is often created — so either way you gain, a safe head or an illumined one.

31 August 1938