Selected Poetry

These poems are taken from an early compilation of Sri Chinmoy’s poetry – entitled ‘Selected Poetry of Sri Chinmoy’. Many of these poems are Sri Chinmoy’s own poetic translations of his Bengali songs.

 

My heart longs to be dissolved
In wings of air
And fly in the unhorizoned sky.
I long to open up
All my heart-doors
In the delight of my liberation-life.
May my life begin
With the breath of a new hope.

– Sri Chinmoy

In the universal heart all hearts, are one, inseparable, I know.
Yet knowing this, I hurt the hearts of others day and night.
We are all the slaves of fate;
It dances on our foreheads.
In peace sublime is the extinction-sleep of fate.
I know this secret.
O Jewel of my eye, pour into my heart
Your golden Silence.

– Sri Chinmoy, [songbook Patience-Groves, #14]

The wave subsides and the wave rises.
The flower withers and the flower blossoms.
There is no end to human wants
And human achievements.
Nothing is permanent and nothing is fleeting.
Then for whom shall we cry,
For what shall we cry?
Whom shall we invoke
With a new thought and new form?
Everything eventually blossoms.

– Sri Chinmoy, [songbook Illumination-Song and Liberation-Dance, Part 5 , ]

I just walk on;
My walking never ends.
I have never calculated
The loss and gain of my journey.
Alas, am I to go on
Eternally in vain
In this earth-desert
Full of dust and sand, thorns and smoke?

– Sri Chinmoy, [songbook Supreme, I sing only for You , ]

By whose touch does the lily smile
And open its beauty-bud?
Whose moonlit beauty
Do I see in the lily?
Who is the Eye of my eye;
Who is the Heart of my heart?
Alas, then why do I not see Him,
His Face of transcendental Beauty,
Even in my dreams.

– Sri Chinmoy, Supreme, teach me how to cry

Yonder I hear in the depth of my heart
Your Nectar-Silence.
There shall be no problems,
No complications in my life any more.
From now on I shall be the child of light
In the ocean of life
And there my little boat is sailing,
Sailing with enormous delight.
My life is the game of hundreds of waves
In the great ocean of life.

Sri Chinmoy, Pole-star promise-light, part 4

To see the light,
A tiny blade of grass remains wide awake all night.
To see the light,
The buds offer their devoted eagerness.
Alas, neither a blade of grass nor the buds
Can awaken my aspiration-flame.
I sleep and sleep,
My ears tightly closed.

Sri Chinmoy, Illumination-song and liberation-dance, part 5

In how many ways You have sung
The song of liberation in my heart.
In return You have received only
Unbearable pain.
I see all around me
The heavy load of poverty
And the slumber of inconscience.
How can I lose myself in the waters of peace?

Sri Chinmoy, Patience-groves

You have made me discover
In the depth of my heart
That You are at once great and small,
You are at once the finite and the Infinite.
You are everybody’s Lord
And, at the same time, everybody’s slave.
Smiles and sorrows in one tune
Are being played inside Your Heart.
The game of opposites always I notice in You.
The opposites always dance in You.

Sri Chinmoy, Pole-Star Promise-Light, Part 2 [song #33]

True, I do not know
The language divine.
True, I do not know
My true self-form.
But I know, Mother,
You are the Mother of Compassion;
Therefore, ignorance-ugliness
Will not last in me for long.
Your Light of Infinity
Will illumine me within and without.

Sri Chinmoy, Pole-Star Promise-Light, Part 2 [song #33]

In my heart-forest
I heard the jingling of Your ankle-bells.
I see You in my dreams.
But alas, when I am awake,
I see You not.
How I wish to see You during the day
And not at night in my dreams!
May the dream-reality be manifested
In my outer life of existence.
O Beauty unparalleled,
May Your Beauty be manifested
In my day-to-day activities
At every moment of my wakeful life.

Sri Chinmoy, Pole-Star Promise-Light, Part 2 [song #11]

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