Canto 42The Word of the Silence
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Sonnets
Shiva
On the white summit of eternity
A single Soul of bare infinities,
5Guarded he keeps by a fire-screen of peace
His mystic loneliness of nude ecstasy.
But, touched by an immense delight to be,
He looks across unending depths and sees
Musing amid the inconscient silences
10The Mighty Mother’s dumb felicity.
Half now awake she rises to his glance;
Then, moved to circling by her heart-beats’ will,
The rhythmic worlds describe that passion-dance.
Life springs in her and Mind is born; her face
15She lifts to Him who is Herself, until
The Spirit leaps into the Spirit’s embrace.
The Word of the Silence
A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
20A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure of thought, virgin of will.
Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
25A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.
But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’ ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.
30All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.