Canto 106The World Game
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
(The Ishwara to the Ishwari)
In god-years yet unmeasured by a man’s thought or by the earth’s dance or
the moon’s spin
I have guarded the law of the Invisible for the sake of thy smile, O
5sweet;
While lives followed innumerable winged lives, as if birds crossing a wide
sea,
I have watched on the path of the centuries for the light of thy
running feet.
10The earth’s dancing with the sun in his fire-robes, was it not thou circling
my flame-soul,
The gazings of the moon in its nectar-joy were my look questing for
thee through Space?
The world’s haste and the racing of the tense mind and the long gallop of
15fleet years
Were my speed to arrive through the flux of things and to neighbour
at last thy face.
Lyrical Poems
The earth’s seeking is mine and the immense scope of the slow aeons my
20heart’s way;
For I follow a secret and sublime Will and the steps of thy
Mother-might.
In the dim brute and the peering of man’s brain and the calm sight in a
god’s eyes
25It is I questing in Life’s broken ways for thy laughter and love and light.
When Time moved not nor yet Space was unrolled wide, for thy game of
the worlds I gave
Myself to thy delightful hands of power to govern me and move and
drive;
30To earth’s dumbness I fell for thy desire’s sport weaving my spirit stuff
In a million pattern-shapes of souls made with me alive.
The worlds are only a playfield of Thou-I and a hued masque of the
Two-One,
I am in thee as thou art in me, O Love; we are closer than heart and
35breast;
From thee I leaped forth struck to a spirit spark, I mount back in the soul’s
fire;
To our motion the stars whirl in the swing of Time, our oneness is
Nature’s rest.
40When Light first from the unconscious Immense burst to create nebula and
sun
’Twas the meeting of our hands through the empty Night that
enkindled the fateful blaze;
The huge systems abandoned their inert trance and this green crater of life
45rose
That we might look on each other form on form from the depths of a
living gaze.
The mind travelled in its ranges tier on tier with its wide-eyed or its rapt
thought,
50My thought toiling laboured to know all myself in thee to our atoms
and widths and deeps,
Pondicherry, c. 1927–1947
My all yearns to thy all to be held close, to the heart heart and to self self,
As a sea with a sea joins or limbs with limbs, and as waking’s delight
55with sleep’s.
When mind pinnacled is lost in thy Light-Vasts and the man drowns in the
wide god,
Thy Truth shall ungirdle its golden flames and thy diamond whiteness
blaze;
60My souls lumined shall discover their joy-self, they shall clasp all in the
near One,
And the sorrow of the heart shall turn to bliss and thy sweetness
possess earth’s days.
Then shall Life be thy arms drawing thy own clasped to thy breast’s
65rapture or calm peace,
With thy joy for the spirit’s immortal flame and thy peace for its
deathless base.
Our eyes meeting the long love shut in deep eyes and our beings held fast
and one,
70I shall know that the game was well worth the toil whose end is thy
divine embrace.