Poems from Sri Aurobindo

A Dream of Surreal Science

One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet, drink
At the Mermaid, capture immortality;
A committee of hormones on the Aegean’s brink
Composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.

A thyroid, meditating almost nude
Under the Bo-tree, saw the eternal Light
And, rising from its mighty solitude,
Spoke of the Wheel and eightfold Path all right.

A brain by a disordered stomach driven
Thundered through Europe, conquered, ruled and fell;
From St. Helena went, perhaps, to Heaven.
Thus wagged on the surreal world, until

A scientist played with atoms and blew out
The universe before God had time to shout.

Sri Aurobindo

The Bliss of Brahman

I have become a foam-white sea of bliss,
I am a curling wave of God's delight,
A shapeless flow of happy passionate light,
A whirlpool of the streams of Paradise.

I am a cup of His felicities,
A thunderblast of His golden ecstasy's might,
A fire of joy upon creation's height,
I am His rapture's wonderful abyss.

I am drunken with the glory of the Lord,
I am vanquished by the beauty of the Unborn;
I have looked, alive, upon the Eternal's face.

My mind is cloven by His radiant sword,
My heart by His beatific touch is torn;
My life is a meteor-dust of His flaming Grace.

The Miracle of Birth

I saw my soul a traveller through Time;
From life to life the cosmic ways it trod,
Obscure in the depths and on the heights sublime,
Evolving from the word into the god.

A spark of the eternal Fire, it came
To build a house in Matter for the Unborn.
The inconscient sunless Night received the flame;
In the brute seed of things dumb and forlorn.

Life stirred and Thought outlined a gleaming shape
Till on the stark inanimate earth could move,
Born to somnambulist Nature in her sleep
A thinking creature who can hope and love.

Still by slow steps the miracle goes on,
The Immortal's gradual birth mid mire and stone.