The Secret Splendour

Sehra

 

1

 

Freedom—24.4.1980

 

With the Far-away's call

Quickening your heart-beat

You freed yourself from all

Earth's bitter-sweet.

 

Terrible at times the means

By which the soul

Drops out of mortal space

To its inmost goal.

 

A moment your whole life hung

'Twixt heaven and abyss;

Then the Great Mother caught you

In Her arms of bliss.

 

No shadow fell from the past.

A smiling future's light

Flowered through your face to answer

Our clamorous questioning sight.

26.4.80

Page 628

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2

 

Road Down—Road Up

 

Without a word you went.

Ungracious not to tell—

Unless your silence meant

The sheer Ineffable....

 

The dark abyss devised

A horror for your part.

 Suddenly you surprised

Death by your Godward heart.

 

While playing his tragic role,

In a bravery of sleep

 Heaven's depth within your soul

You plumbed with your blind leap.

6.5.1980

Page 629

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3

 

Voice from Within

 

"Your work is ended, your time over.

Look now for all your bliss beyond.

Forsake the world, let go your lover,

Break every bend

 That links the body to the soul

With transitory smiles and tears.

Plunge to the diamond pure and whole

Coring frail years!

O does it matter how you die—

Undone by self on in sick bed—

 If either way to its Mother-sky

Your soul is lei?

The passage may be rough or smooth—

What difference to the Light's true child?

Great hands await to calm and soothe

The wounded, the wild.

Sweeter to seek the gentle hour,

But if the heart stands lost and lone

Waver not, claim the sudden power

To pierce the Unknown!"

10.5.80

Page 630

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4

 

To My Own Heart

 

A little more, a little less

Of transitory breath,

What can it bring of blessedness,

What can it bar of death—

An ever-present inner throe—

When the great Master's gone

And the sweet Mother chose to go

And left their children lone?

 Only remains a lustre-touch

On Spirit by the soul—

But this one joy is always such,

Be the body broken or whole.

It makes no change that one should leave

Sooner or later, die

Self-slain or let slow Time achieve

Its finishing artistry.

If triumph is to meet, all clear

Of veils, the vanished Light,

 Heart, grieve not that the face most dear

Has robbed you of its sight!

12.5.80

Page 631

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5

 

Two Months

 

Since her own flight, two months have flown

Out of the earth's mad whirl,

Joining in the depths of the unknown

The eternity of my girl.

 

Our life is woven of vanishing time,

Death after death are we.

When will this heart be hushed to rhyme

With my girl's eternity?

 

Soon may that miracle be done—

A bliss-bolt from God's blue

That, piercing day and night, makes one

Eternity of us two!

24.6.80

Page 632

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6

 

Life and Death

 

Death broke our lives

Wide apart—

 But death has cut my distance

From your deep heart.

 

So close by night and day,

Yet touch I empty air—

 This new life's double way,

Sweetness most hard to bear.

 

Never would I have grown

One with your soul of love

If never left alone

A body which death clove

 

From your abandoned form

And urged to f train

 Void arms to the Unseen

Calling to clasp my pain.

30.9.80

Page 633

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7

 

Love's Plunge

 

She was born with so great love

It broke her heart

And, plunging outward, clove

Death's veil apart.

 

She cried: "Where lives the one

I've sought each hour?

 All that I deemed my own

Flees my love's power.

 

"Shall I find you in the deep

That gathers all

 To a single soothing sleep

Beyond life's call?

 

"Within that gulfing peace

The dreamed and the true

Might merge—and eternities

Be endless you."

5.11.80

Page 634

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8

 

At the Mother's Samadhi

 

A glory You've made my days

Because Your feet

 Have let me count their steps

With each heart-beat.

 

Though pain on pain has struck,

I'll not blaspheme,

Calling death's sleep to drown

Life's shipwrecked dream.

 

Forever Yours until

The appointed close—

 Only in eyes of light

I seek repose

 

My days You've made a glory.

Abysms I'll cross

Yet reach the Immense, the Full

And lose all loss.

6.11.80

Page 635

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9

 

Transmutation

 

Seeing you freed from the long tremor of human breath,

Each flame in me straightened in that deep calm,

your death.

 

Flickerless, the soul now strained to an empyrean air

Through your still face of all-forgetting endless prayer.

 

Surrendered limbs, in-gaze, faint smiling lips apart—

 It's so you unknotted forever the time-grip on my heart.

16.11.80

Page 636

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