Spiritual Poems

I will try to post a poem every day.

The Inner Fields
by Sri Aurobindo


There is a brighter ether than this blue
Pretence of an enveloping heavenly vault,
Royaler investiture than this massed assault
Of emerald rapture pearled with tears of dew.
Immortal spaces of cerulean hue
Are in our reach and fields without this fault
Of drab brown earth and streams that never halt
In their deep murmur which white flowers strew

Floating like stars upon a strip of sky.
This world behind is made of truer stuff
Than the manufactured tissue of earth's grace.
There we can walk and see the gods go by
And sip from Hebe's cup nectar enough
To make for us heavenly limbs and deathless face.

"With my tears,
I watered the creeper of love that I planted;
Now the creeper has grown spread all over,
and borne the fruit of bliss.
The churner of the milk churned with great love.
When I took out the butter,
no need to drink any buttermilk.
I came for the sake of love-devotion;
seeing the world, I wept. "

What could have caused your grip to weaken
that allowed creation to be?

How could a lover fall to his death
from the arms of infinite
strength?

How active you are in the mind sustaining such a great wall
that the sun can cast a frightening shadow
the world believes.

No one has ever really known sadness. No real God
would ever allow pain.

How then can a heart feel it is broken and in need
If we are held in the arms of infinite
compassion and
strength?

The mirror you (God) stand before -
we need to gaze into it also.

That name you called Beloved
as I fell from your lips -
I suffer

because I did not quite
hear it;

so tell me again dear One
so clear:

I am
you.

He who utters the Name of God while walking
gets the merit of a sacrifice at every step.
His body becomes a place of pilgrimage.
He who repeats God’s Name while working
always finds perfect peace.
He who utters the Name of God while eating
gets the merit of a fast
even though he has taken his meals.
Even if one were to give in charity
the whole world encircled by the seas
it would not equal the merit of repeating the Name.
By the power of the Name
one will know what cannot be known,
One will see what cannot be seen,
One will speak what cannot be spoken,
One will meet what cannot be met.
Tuka says,
Incalculable is the gain that comes
From repeating the Name of God.

by Vivekananda

The Mother's heart, the hero's will,
The softest flowers' sweetest feel;
The charm and force that ever sway
The altar-fire's flaming play;
The strength that leads, in love obeys;
Far-reaching dreams, and patient ways,
Eternal faith in Self, in all,
The light Divine in great, in small;
All these and more than I could see,
Today may "Mother" grant to thee!

by Sri Aurobindo

All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief,
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known-unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.

Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still.
Replaces all, - what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.

Soul in the Ignorance,
by Sri Aurobindo

Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.
Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,
Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre.

One, universal, ensphering creation,
Wheeling no more with inconscient Nature,
Feel thyself God-born, know thyself deathless.
Timeless return to thy immortal existence.

To Meditate,
by Thich Nhat Hanh

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace.

Disappearance,
by Thich Nhat Hanh

The leaf tips bend
under the weight of dew.
Fruits are ripening
in Earth's early morning.
Daffodils light up in the sun.
The curtain of cloud at the gateway
of the garden path begins to shift:
have pity for childhood,
the way of illusion.

Late at night,
the candle gutters.
In some distant desert,
a flower opens.
And somewhere else,
a cold aster
that never knew a cassava patch
or gardens of areca palms,
never knew the joy of life,
at that instant disappears-
man's eternal yearning.

Infant Joy, by William Blake

``I have no name:
I am but two days old.''
What shall I call thee?
``I happy am,
Joy is my name.''
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

There is a candle in your heart,
``ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
``ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
``from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
``embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
``Love
``comes to you of its own accord,
``and the yearning for it
``cannot be learned in any school.

-Rumi

*sometimes there are indentions in these poems, in this one for instance there are, but they don't show up and I don't know how to format them to. Maybe this works? (I just added `'s)

Hm..

Song for Nobody, by Thomas Merton

A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.

Invitation, by Sri Aurobindo

With wind and the weather beating round me
Up to the hill and the moorland I go.
Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?
Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?

Not in the petty circle of cities
Cramped by your doors and your walls I dwell;
Over me God is blue in the welkin,
Against me the wind and the storm rebel.

I sport with solitude here in my regions,
Of misadventure have made me a friend.
Who would live largely? Who would live freely?
Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.

I am the Lord of tempest and mountain,
I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.
Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.

Because Thou Art,
by Sri Aurobindo


Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
`My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee ;
It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
`And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.


Behind all eyes I meet Thy secret gaze
`And in each voice I hear Thy magic tune :
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature's ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.


It loves Thy body in all living things;
`Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings ;
`Sight's endless artistry is Thou alone

Time voyages with Thee upon its prow
And all the future's passionate hope is Thou.

In Silence,
by Thomas Merton

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”