Overhead Poetry

Two Moments

Dark quietudes in a quiet gleam,

The branches woke with not a sough

The mere which made them water-souled,

Rapt from the rush of severing days.

One leaf forsook its hanging bough—

Fell through that agelessness of dream.

A wrinkle crept on the water's face,

And all light suddenly grew old.

Sri Aurobindo's Comment

"Very subtle and suggestive."

*

A series of poems were written in quick succession during three months in 1948, about which Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter:

"Your new poems are very remarkable and original in their power of thought and language and image. But precisely for that reason I have to study and consider carefully each individual poem separately before I can comment on them either generally or in detail. That will be possible only after some time, perhaps a considerable time. I am afraid you will have to possess your soul in patience till things are quieter and time less crowded. The only thing I can find meanwhile to send you is the note I put down in passing after reading a few of these poems. 'Some of the poems such as Soul of Song have a remarkable

perfection and this is often accompanied with a great felicity and power of revelatory image as in Cosmic Rhythms. In another poem, Unbirthed, the images grow more audacious and tense and might seem to some to be almost violent in their push but they usually justify themselves by their originality and success.' ''

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