Canto 63The World Game
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Pondicherry, c. 1927–1947
The circle of the occult argent Yes of the Invisible to the dim query of the
yearning witness lights
That burn in the dense vault of Matter’s waking mind — innumerable,
5solitary and sparse.
A disk of a greater Ray that shall come, a white-fire rapture and girdling
rose of love,
Timelessly thou driftest, O soundless silver boat that set out from the
far Unknown,
10Moon-crystal of silver or gold of some spirit joy spun by Time in his dense
aeonic groove,
A messenger and bearer of an unembodied beauty and unseized bliss
advancing over our life’s wan sea — significant, bright and alone.
The World Game
15(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
sweet;
20While 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.
The earth’s dancing with the sun in his fire-robes, was it not thou circling
25my 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
fleet years
30Were 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
heart’s way;
35For 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
It is I questing in Life’s broken ways for thy laughter and love and light.
40When 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;
To earth’s dumbness I fell for thy desire’s sport weaving my spirit stuff
45In 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
breast;
50From 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.
When Light first from the unconscious Immense burst to create nebula and
55sun
’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
rose
60That 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,
My thought toiling laboured to know all myself in thee to our atoms
65and 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
with sleep’s.
70When 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;
My souls lumined shall discover their joy-self, they shall clasp all in the
75near 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
rapture or calm peace,
80With 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,
I shall know that the game was well worth the toil whose end is thy
85divine embrace.