Collected Poems - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

508 Pondicherry, c. 1910 – 1920
Shall God know? Will His spies come down to our beautiful valley?
They shall grow drunk with its grapes and wander in woodland and alley.
There will His anger follow us, there will His lightnings immortal
Wander around with their red eye of cruelty stabbing the portal?
Yes, I shall fear then His play! I will sport with my dove from His highlands,
Pleased with her laughter of bliss like a god in my Grecian islands.
Daughter of Heaven, break through to me, moonlike, mystic and gleaming.
Come through the margins of twilight, over the borders of dreaming.
Vision bright that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
Vision of bliss, stoop down! Encircle me, madden me, love me.
AHANA
Voice of the sensuous mortal! heart of eternal longing!
Thou who hast lived as in walls, thy soul with thy senses wronging!
But I descend to thee. Fickle and terrible, sweet and deceiving,
Poison and nectar One has dispensed to thee, luring thee, leaving.
We two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless.
Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with flowers that are scentless,
Chased the delights that wound. But I come and the darkness shall sunder.
Lo, I come and behind me knowledge descends and with thunder
Filling the spaces Strength the Angel bears on his bosom
Joy to thy arms. Thou shalt look on her face like a child’s or a blossom,
Innocent, free as in Eden of old, not afraid of her playing.
Pain was not meant for ever, hearts were not made but for slaying.
Thou shalt not suffer always nor cry to me, lured and forsaken.
I have a snare for His footsteps, I have a chain for Him taken.
Come then to Brindâvun, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyâma for slave and for master, —
Follow the notes of the flute with a soul aware and exulting,
Trample Delight that submits and crouch to a sweetness insulting.
Thou shalt know what the dance meant, fathom the song and the singer,
Hear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to His finger,
Brindâvun’s rustle shalt understand and Yamuna’s laughter,
Take thy place in the Râs and thy share of the ecstasy after.