Canto 8Transformation

Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947

My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream;

It fills my members with a might divine:

I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.

Time is my drama or my pageant dream.

5Now are my illumined cells joy’s flaming scheme

And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine

Channels of rapture opal and hyaline

For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.

I am no more a vassal of the flesh,

10A slave to Nature and her leaden rule;

I am caught no more in the senses’ narrow mesh.

My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,

My body is God’s happy living tool,

My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.