From Rhapsodies
1916-1918

CLOTURE

Destiny slid through the narrow door,
the door one suspects yet cannot see
so pale it is.

Destiny slid along the high walls
there hung in chains ghosts of days of love
— and with a gesture freed them.

And when she came near the table
where the Now was writing itself
she said: "It is I."

The silence weighed oppressively
as if all there was had stopped.

And the hand writing the chapter
traced the word: END.

And I went away.



From Resonances
1924-29

23. NOW COMES THE MOMENT

Now comes the moment of Soul.
Years have passed
of search, of contingencies,
of hopes and stillborn deeds.
It has been a good fight, clean and fair.
Now, as if death were near,
I stand facing the wall that may open,
strong at heart, ready for the confrontation.
I may fail
yet am not afraid of failure.
I may win
yet court no victory.
I have but one aim:
to fulfill my destiny

whatever the means, whatever the fruits,
whatever the path.
I contemplate the past from which I emerged:
my record.
Nothing seems useless now
nothing wasted, nothing that could be otherwise.
Satisfaction?
This would be meaningless.
There is never "enough";
but what is
IS.
To that I assent.

Utter calmness, indifference even.
It does not matter. It is not "matter".
It is not one thing or the other.
It is I, that am all.
For this minute I am all,
because poised in destiny,
unified in destiny,
a uniqueness which is Allness,
a void transparent to fullness.

It is all there.
It matters not that I cannot spell the names.
When all names are told at once
they become meaningless;
they become power.
Because I am power that is total I desire nothing.
How could I?
To desire
is to admit lack of power.
But to him that is power as destiny,
death is open.
He marches into it
towards the Soul.

I am marching on, my friends,
into my space and my silence.
It is as if I were all open,
open like an ever-receding sky.
It is so quiet
I can sense the heart beats
of multitudes of destinies.
I am poised in all destinies.

From White Thunder
1932-38

HYMN TO SHIVA

O Mahadeva! Lord of the Burning Ground,
consume thou me with thy power.
Exalt me by destroying me.
Burn my limitations
into the boundless flame of thy might.
Ravage my heart with the torrid passion of thy equators.
Scorch my eyes with the fire
of thy own Eye triumpher over forms.
Tear it open, mine Eye. Tear it aflame,
that it may rejoice in the holocaust of names.
Crash open the gates of my sanctuary
and let the tone of me reverberate through space,
thy own boundless wastes, electric with raging fire.

Lord of the Holy Ones!
Lord of affirmations whose magnificence soars
with the black wings of endless denials!
Lord of the non-human that is greater manhood . . .
my Master!

I come as an infant light
flickering through the obscure path of thy visitation.
I come with insecure steps and heart bewildered
to give up my search to thy certitude,
my darkness to mould into some strong chalice
where thy flame may burn and thy magnitude condense
for the sake of unborn that crave for electric breath.

Oh! rend thou me into my Pentecost,
tongue of fire that scars
the rich field to the earth.
I will go forth through the wounded plains,
cauterize deeper the gangrene of self.
I will light on all peaks fires of eternal St. John.
And when the day shall have passed
and all men tear aflame
across starless wastes to the void of thee,
then, 0 Beloved! I shall ascend into thy Nothing,
and rejoice into thine indifference.

HYMN TO AGNI

Out of the depth of Fire rises He who has no name.
His chariot flames forth with the splendor of noon day suns.
Cataracts of light excoriates the path
over which rides the tumult of his red stallions.

His face is like seas of molten gold.
It glows with the incandescence
of vast ice-fields struck by dazzling light.

Agni! Agni! Lord of the ever-burning Heart!
Let me behold thy glory.
Let me bathe in thine ecstasy.
Exalt me beyond the Shining Ones.

Verily thou art the Life of all beings.
Thou singest chants of torrid fervor
in the souls of thy beloved.
Thou art the Mighty and the Effulgent.

I warm my love at the foot-prints of thy coursers.
My eyes glow with the fire they once caught
from beholding thee.
O Thou, of whom all the worlds are the shadow,
Agni, Lord of gods! Bless my darkness.



From Resurgence I
1954-58

THE TEST

Through the Master, the mastery speaks;
through the flame, the fire burns;
through all worlds, space is revealed.

O seeker after ultimates,
will you strive to reach the Master?
Is your heart entranced by the flame?
Do you still hunger for substance?

Or will your emptiness call

for mastery to speak through,
for the fire to burn through,
for space to find in you
a focus
for the ever-new birth
of ever-renewed worlds?



From Resurgence II
1957-58

THEURGY

The tonitruant grandeur of inescapable passion
burst into cataracts of light through the human soul
ravenous with theurgic apocalypses.

Give me infinite space and I shall make cosmoi
effulgent with irresistible solutions of power!
Give me catapults of flaming cycles, and I shall whirl
through cosmic dust prologomena to stars
nurtured by the matricial logic of galaxies!
Give me faith and restlessness, and I shall evoke
the magnificent insanity of all-conquering man.
Give me man at white heat, and I shall induce God!

The tonitruant grandeur of human cataclysms
stills into Indestructible seeds of mind pregnant
with apocalyptic poems of divinity.