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

Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) [11]

Pharphar

Where is the glassy gold of Pharphar,—

Or its echoing silver-gray

When the magic ethers of evening

Wash one the various day?

I have travelled the whole earth over,

Yet never found

The beautiful body of Pharphar

Or its soul of secret sound.

But all my dreams are an answer

To Pharphar’s blind career;

And the songs that I sing are an image

Of quiets I long to hear.

For, only this beauty unreachèd

No time shall mar —

This river of infinite distance,

Pharphar.

Very beautiful indeed, subtle and gleaming and delicate. The sound-suggestions are perfect. I suppose it comes from some plane of intuitive inspiration.

15 October 1936