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0 MY BOATMAN

0 my Boat, 0 my Boatman,
0 message of Transcendental Delight,
Carry me. My heart is thirsty and hungry,
And it is fast asleep at the same time.
Carry my heart to the other shore.
The dance of death I see all around.
The thunder of destruction indomitable I hear.
0 my Inner Pilot, You are mine,
You are the Ocean of Compassion infinite.
In You I lose myself,
My all in You I lose.[28]

 
The speaker leans to God to transport him beyond his present suffering, as a boatman ferries passengers to the farther shore. As the poem progresses, however, we notice the speaker's growing realisation that if God is the Boatman, He is also the Boat, the ocean on which it travels and the "other shore" that is the goal. The speaker intuits the presence of God in each aspect of the image.

It is interesting to note that Sri Chinmoy characteristically chooses to leave the figure of the Boatman undelineated by his imagination. God is approached not in a descriptive way but in His role as Boatman. We know Him by His transforming action on the speaker's life rather than by any particularising feature. Tagore, on the other hand, using a parallel image, adopts an approach of greater descriptive specificity:

The day is no more, the shadow is upon the earth. It time that I go to the stream to fill my pitcher.
The evening air is eager with the sad music of the water. Ah, it calls me out into the dusk. In the lonely lane there is no passer-by, the wind is up, the ripples are rampant in the river.
I know not if I shall come back home. I know not whom I shall chance to meet. There at the fording in the little boat the unknown man plays upon his lute.[29]