Canto 53Omnipresence
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Pondicherry, c. 1927–1947
Self
He said, “I am egoless, spiritual, free,”
Then swore because his dinner was not ready.
5I asked him why. He said, “It is not me,
But the belly’s hungry god who gets unsteady.”
I asked him why. He said, “It is his play.
I am unmoved within, desireless, pure.
I care not what may happen day by day.”
10I questioned him, “Are you so very sure?”
He answered, “I can understand your doubt.
But to be free is all. It does not matter
How you may kick and howl and rage and shout,
Making a row over your daily platter.
15To be aware of self is liberty.
Self I have got and, having self, am free.”
Omnipresence
He is in me, round me, facing everywhere.
Self-walled in ego to exclude His right,
20I stand upon its boundaries and stare
Into the frontiers of the Infinite.
Each finite thing I see is a fa¸cade;
From its windows looks at me the Illimitable.
In vain was my prison of separate body made;
25His occult presence burns in every cell.
He has become my substance and my breath;
He is my anguish and my ecstasy.
My birth is His eternity’s sign, my death
A passage of His immortality.
30My dumb abysses are His screened abode;
In my heart’s chamber lives the unworshipped God.