50 Poems from Auroville

50 Poems from Auroville

This is an anthology of 50 poems written in the last 50 years, as a gift and tribute to Auroville on the 50th anniversary of its founding on 28th February 1968.

The poems are by Aurovilians, former Aurovilians and those involved with or who have been in some way touched by Auroville or The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The selection includes poems previously published in various Auroville and private collections together with poems recently submitted in response to a request in Auroville News and Notes.

Not all the poems in this anthology are the product of openness to higher planes of consciousness, or are even necessarily ‘spiritual’. Some express a deep yearning for a life to be lived in oneness with the consciousness of the truth of things and the spirit. Some have been included because they convey vividly a sense of truth or honesty or strongly evoke a sense of connection with the place or scene we may have experienced, or tell us something about the Auroville experience. Or they simply have an appealing poetic quality.

Book Details

Author: Compilation of aurovilian poets done by Vikas (Alan Vickers)
Print Length: 43
Publisher: Vikas (Alan Vickers)
Contributor: Krishna
Book format: Pdf, ePub, mobi (Kindle)
Language: English

Book Download

Contents

Navoditte (Norman Thomas)

• Early One Morning
• With Stump of Candle
• The Experiential Ploy

Marta Gruha

• The Indian Shawl
• For Anita

Lady Jean

• To Philippa

Kevin Myers

• In Darkness
• By the Samadhi
• Where is the Straight and Narrow Path?
• To Mick

Maggi Lidchi

• That Tender Pulsing

Narad (Richard Eggenberger)

• Homage to Sri Aurobindo

Roger Harris

• In the Silence of a Moontide
• Autumn Twilight

Gordon Korstange

• Graveyard
• Dry Season Shower
• The News
• Village wedding
• Banyan Tree Amma

Vivek

• In the City of Lost…

Bindu

• And Think Only of This

Dick Batstone (AVI UK)

• Observations in Auroville
• The Meeting Place
• The Yogi
• Heraclitus and Matrimandir
• Near Tiberias

John O’Neill (AVI Ireland)

• Will You Take This Little Bit I Have….

Savitra (Alan Sasha Lithman)

• Gravity

Shraddhavan

• Deep Places
• Remembering
• Pearl Fishing
• How to go Through ?
• Evening Illumination

Lloyd Hoffman

• With the Weight of Decades

Chandresh

• Summer Rain (Grace)

Vikas (Alan Vickers)

• Home
• Heart
• The Samadhi
• Not Dying
• 2 Haikus
• The Tree

Anuradha Legrand

• Transfer 2
• Fire

Celestine, Auroville

• I am an Active, Living Dynamo

Meenakshi

• Thousands of Kingdoms

Alan Herbert

• Return
• Hinge
• Beyond
• Who Cares?
• It’s the Body, Stupid

Sample

50 Poems from Auroville

Vikas

Home

O longed-for home, O distant, dazzling height,
So far-off, dreamed-of, deeply sought;
A crowning citadel atop the glaciated valleys of the Night.
The twisted tracks that lead to aspiration’s peaks
Beset the traveller with slip and fall
And labour long, unending, as of Time,
Or drop their dire and shadow-dense disguise
Revealing straight and sunlit ways to tread.
But where is home when all is plod and plod?
When can the climber rest, his labour done?
Where is the summit-home, the promised throne?
Where is the bliss-brimmed rock that heaven made of clay,
The light-hewn city, sanctuary at end of weary day?
Where is the breeze whose shining air I breathed in sleep?
The coursing sun-winds shooting through my tissue’s deep?

Each summit was a golden prison for my soul.
There is no final pause; to climb – the only goal.

…

Shraddhavan

Deep Places

I’m in no mood for mountains …
Too near down-pressing sky,
Too barren, bright, unmysteried they lie!
So, climbing to a bald white peak
I stopped – knee-deep in grass and flowers.
Better by far the lower forests,
Where water gurgles out of sight,
And calling, chuckling, birds unseen
Flit from green to deeper green;
There suddenly a single bloom
Strikes to the heart’s enchanted depths
With its clear bell-note of deep blue.
Or let me swim, far from all shallows,
In the still waters where the kraken sleeps,
Where whales slide singing through the shadowy deeps;
There let me dive and drown
All littleness and all fatigue.
But best of all, in deep embracing interstellar spaces
Beyond the sky-lid, free of every limit,
To float forever marvelling
Through endless symphonies of stars!

1984