Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

SABCL - Volume 5

I. Short Poems
1902-1930

Kama

(According to one idea Desire is the creator and sustainer of things,– Desire and Ignorance. By losing desire one passes beyond the Ignorance, as by passing beyond Ignorance one loses desire; then the created world is surpassed and the soul enters into the Divine Reality. Kama here speaks as Desire the Creator, an outgoing power from the Bliss of the Divine Reality to which, abandoning desire, one returns, ānandaṃ brahmaṇo vidvān, possessing the bliss of the Brahman.)

O desolations vast, O seas of space

Unpeopled, realms of an unfertile light,

Grow multitudinous with living forms,

Enamoured of desire! I send My breath

Into the heart of being and the storm

Of sweet attraction shall break up its calm

With quivering passionate intensity,

And silence change to a melodious cry,

And all the world be rose. Out of my heart

Suns shall flame up into the pitiless¹ void

And the stars wheel in magic dances round

Weaving the web of mortal life. For I

Am love, am passion. I create the world.

I am the only Brahma. My desire

Takes many forms; I change and wheel and race

And with me runs creation. I preserve,

For I am love. I weary of myself,

And the world circles back into the Vast.

Delight and laughter walking hand in hand

Go with me, and I play with grief and pain.

I am the dance of Krishna, I the dance

Of Kali², Might and Majesty are mine.

And I can³ make the heart a child at play,

The soul of things a woman full of bliss.

Hunger and Thirst, arise and make the world!

Delight, go down and give it strength to live!

O ether, change! O breath of things, grow full

Of the perpetual whirl! Break out, O fire,

In seas of magic colour, infinite waves

Of rainbow light! Thou liquid element,

Be sap, be taste in all created things

To please the senses. Thou, O solid earth,

Enter into all life, support the worlds.

I send forth joy to cheer⁴ the hearts of men,

I send forth law to harmonise and rule.

And when these things are done, when men have learned

My beauty, My desirability, My bliss,

I will conceal myself from their desire

And make this rule of the eternal chase,

“They who abandon Me, shall to all time

Clasp and possess; they who pursue, shall lose.”

Later edition of this work: The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.- Set in 37 volumes.- Volume 2.- Collected Poems.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2009.- 751 p.

¹ 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: listless

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² 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: Kálí

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³ 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: yet I

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⁴ 2009 ed. CWSA, vol.2: lure

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