Canto 4The Descent of Ahana - II
Book 14. Book IX
II
AHANA
Lo, on the hills I have paused, on the peaks of the world I have halted
Here in the middle realms of Varuna the world-wide-exalted.
5Gods, who have drawn me down to the labour and sobs of creation,
First I would speak with the troubled hearts and the twilit nation,
Speak then, I bend my ear to the far terrestrial calling,
Speak, O thou toiling race of humanity, welcome me falling,
Space for whose use in a boundless thought was unrolled and extended;
10Time in its cycles waited for man. Though his kingdom is ended,
Here in a speck mid the suns and his life is a throb in the aeons,
Yet, O you Titans and Gods, O Rudras, O strong Aditeians,
Man is the centre and knot; he is first, though the last in the ages.
I would remember your cycles, recover your vanished pages;
15I have the vials divine, I rain down the honey and manna;
Speak, O thou soul of humanity, knowing me. I am Ahana.
A VOICE
Vision bright, that walkest crowned on the hills far above me,
Vision of bliss, stoop down from thy calm and thy silence to love me.
20Only is calm so sweet? Is our end tranquillity only?
Chill are your rivers of peace and their banks are leafless and lonely.
Art thou not sated with sunlight only, cold in its lustre?
Art thou not weary of only the stars in their solemn muster?
Always the hills and the high-hung plateaus, — solitude’s voices
25Making the silence lonelier! Only the eagle rejoices
In the inhuman height of his nesting, — austerely striving,
Deaf with the cry of the waterfall, only the pine there is thriving.
We have the voice of the cuckoo, the nightingale sings in the branches,
Human laughter leads and the cattle low in the ranches.
30Come to our tangled sunbeams, dawn on our twilights and shadows,
Taste with us, scent with us fruits of our trees and flowers of our meadows.
Art thou an angel of God in His heavens that they vaunt of, His sages?
Skies of monotonous calm and His stillness filling the ages?
Is He thy master, Rudra the mighty, Shiva ascetic?
35The Descent of Ahana
Has He denied thee his worlds? In His dance that they tell of, ecstatic,
Slaying, creating, calm in the midst of His movement and madness,
Was there no place for an earthly joy, for a human sadness?
Did He not make us and thee? O Woman, joy’s delicate blossom
40Sleeps in thy lids of delight! All Nature laughs in thy bosom
Hiding her children unborn and the food of her love and her laughter.
Is He then first? Was there none before Him? shall none come after?
We too have gods, — the Tritons rise in the leap of the billows,
Emerald locks of the Nereids stream on their foam-crested pillows,
45Dryads sway out from the branches, Naiads glance up through the waters;
Heaven has dances of joy and the gods are ensnared by her daughters.
Artemis calls as she flees through the glades and the breezes pursue her,
Cypris laughs in her isles where the Ocean-winds linger to woo her.
Thou shalt behold in glades forgotten the dance of the Graces,
50Night shall be haunted for ever with strange and delicate faces.
Lo, all these peoples and who was it fashioned them? Who is unwilling
Still to have done with it? laughs beyond pain and saves in the killing?
Nature, you say; but is God then her enemy? Was she created,
He unknowing or sleeping? Did someone transgress the fated
55Limits He set, outwitting God? Nay, we know it was fashioned
By the Almighty One, million-ecstasied, thousand-passioned.
But He created a discord within it, fashioned a limit?
Fashioned or feigned? for He set completeness beyond. To disclaim it,
To be content with our measure, they say, is the law of our living.
60Rather to follow always and, baffled, still to go striving.
Yes, it is true that we dash ourselves stark on a barrier appearing,
Fall and are wounded. But He insists who is in us, the fearing
Conquers, the grief. We resist; His temptations leap down compelling;
Virtue cheats us with noble names to a lofty rebelling.
65Fiercely His wrath and His jealousy strike down the rebel aspiring,
Thick and persistent His night confronts our eager inquiring;
Yet ’tis His strengths descend crying always, “Rebel; aspire!”
Still through the night He sends rays, to our bosoms a quenchless fire.
Most to our joys He sets limits, most with His pangs He perplexes;
70Yet when we faint it is He that spurs. Temptation vexes;
Honied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
Moonlight, the voice of the streams; from hundreds of beautiful faces
Pondicherry, c. 1910–1920
Always He cries to us, “Love me!”, always He lures us to pleasure,
75Then escapes and leaves anguish behind for our only treasure.
Shall we not say then that joy is greatest, rapture His meaning?
That which He most denies, is His purpose. The hedges, the screening,
Are they not all His play? In our end we have rapture for ever
Careless of Time, with no fear of the end, with no need for endeavour.
80What was the garden He built when the stars were first set in their places,
Man and woman together mid streams and in cloudless spaces,
Naked and innocent? Someone offered a fruit of derision,
Knowledge of good and of evil, cleaving in God a division,
Though He who made all, said, “It is good; I have fashioned perfection.”
85“Nay, there is evil,” someone whispered, “’tis screened from detection.”
Wisest he of the beasts of the field, one cunning and creeping.
“See it,” he said, “be wise. You shall be as the gods are, unsleeping,
They who know all,” and they ate. The roots of our being were shaken;
Hatred and weeping and death at once trampled a world overtaken,
90Terror and fleeing and wrath and shame and desire unsated;
Cruelty stalked like a lion; Revenge and her brood were created.
Out to the desert He drove the rebellious. Flaming behind them
Streamed out the sword of His wrath; it followed, eager to find them,
Stabbing at random. The pure and the evil, the strong and the tempted,
95All are confounded in punishment. Justly is no one exempted.
Virtuous? Yes, there are many; but who is there innocent? Toiling,
Therefore, we seek, but find not that Eden. Planting and spoiling,
“This is the garden,” we say, “lo, the trees! and this is the river.”
Vainly! Redeemers come, but none yet availed to deliver.
100Is it not all His play? Is He Rudra only, the mighty?
Whose are the whispers of sweetness? Whence are the murmurs of pity?
Why are we terrified then, cry out and draw back from the smiting?
Blows of a lover, perhaps, intended for fiercer inciting!
Yes, but the cruelty, yes, but the empty pain we go ruing!
105Edges of sweetness, it may be, call to a swifter pursuing.
Was it not He in Brindˆavun? O woods divine to our yearning,
Memorable always! O flowers, O delight on the treetops burning!
Grasses His kine have grazed and crushed by His feet in the dancing!
Yamuna flowing with sound, through the greenness always advancing!
110You unforgotten remind! For His flute with its sweetness ensnaring
The Descent of Ahana
Sounds in our ears in the night and our souls of their teguments baring
Hales them out naked and absolute, out to His woodlands eternal,
Out to His moonlit dances, His dalliance sweet and supernal,
115And we go stumbling, maddened and thrilled, to His dreadful embraces,
Slaves of His rapture to Brindˆavun crowded with amorous faces,
Luminous kine in the green glades seated soft-eyed grazing,
Flowers from the branches distressing us, moonbeams unearthly amazing,
Yamuna flowing before us, laughing low with her voices,
120Brindˆavun arching o’er us where Shyˆama sports and rejoices.
What though ’tis true that the river of Life through the Valley of Peril
Flows! But the diamond shines on the cliffside, jacinth and beryl
Gleam in the crannies, sapphire, smaragdus the roadway bejewel,
Down in the jaws of the savage mountains granite and cruel.
125Who has not fathomed once all the voiceless threat of those mountains?
Always the wide-pacing river of Life from its far-off fountains
Flows down mighty and broad, like a warhorse brought from its manger
Arching its neck as it paces grand to the gorges of danger.
Sometimes we hesitate, often start and would turn from the trial,
130Vainly: a fierce Inhabitant drives and brooks no denial.
Headlong, o’ercome with a stridulant horror the river descending
Shudders below into sunless depths among chasms unending, —
Angry, afraid, white, foaming. A stony and monstrous resistance
Meets it, piling up stubborn limits, an iron insistence.
135Yet in the midst of our labour and weeping not utterly lonely
Wander our steps, nor are terror and grief our portion only.
Do we not hear in the heart of the peril a flute go before us?
Are there not beckoning hands of the gods that insist and implore us?
Plains are beyond; there are hamlets and fields where the river rejoices
140Pacing once more with a quiet step and amical voices.
There in a woodland red with berries and cool with the breezes, —
Green are the leaves, all night long the heart of the nightingale eases
Sweetly its burden of pity and sorrow, fragrant the flowers, —
There in an arbour delightful I know we shall sport with the Hours,
145Lying on beds of lilies, hearing the bells of our cattle
Tinkle, and drink red wine of our life and go forth to the battle
And unwounded return to our beautiful home by the waters,
Pledge of our joys, rear tall strong sons and radiant daughters.
Pondicherry, c. 1910–1920
150Shall 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,
155Pleased 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.
160AHANA
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.
165We 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
170Joy 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.
175Come then to Brindˆavun, soul of the joyous; faster and faster
Follow the dance I shall teach thee with Shyˆama 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,
180Hear behind thunder its rhymes, touched by lightning thrill to His finger,
Brindˆavun’s rustle shalt understand and Yamuna’s laughter,
Take thy place in the Rˆas and thy share of the ecstasy after.