Her Face O earth! but once behold her Face,
Then all for you is sun-vast Grace.
Your brave despair, your hopeless cry,
Your prison of mortality
Her gaze of Power will break the maim
Into a thousand fragments of Her Name.
Sri Chinmoy first began writing poetry in earnest during his adolescence. First he began writing in his native Bengali, then later moved to writing poetry in English. His early poetry is much more structured and metricized than his current output, which mainly consists of short haiku-like aphorisms.
The above poem is a typical example dating from 1958, referring to the mother aspect of the Divine.
Related links:
- My Flute: more examples of Sri Chinmoy’s early poetry at poetseers.org
- Sri Chinmoy’s poetry used in a Cambridge sermon
- An introduction to ‘Ten Thousand Flower Flames’, a collection of 10,000 of Sri Chinmoy’s short aphorisms, on shortpoems.org
Photo: Prabhakar Street on Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Beautiful poem and picture