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Although Tagore shrouds his boatman with mystery, one can detect a definite concern on the part of the poet to establish the details of the scene, atmospheric details. It is a dream-like realm into which the poet is drawn unknowingly by the sound of the boatman's lute in the dusk. Their meeting takes place just beyond the borders of the poem, its outcome uncertain yet appealing.

For Sri Chinmoy, the figure of the Boatman is created by his imagination to bear the weight of his prayer not, as in the case of Tagore, to amplify a fictional interior. Hence the status of the Boatman is altogether different. The metaphor never slides into fantasy but remains as the signature of a man who can say simply and with unparalleled urgency "Carry me." We feel the authentic pressure of the speaking voice as he explains, "My heart is thirsty and hungry... "[30] Through his unaffected and deliberate style, the poet aspires to an art which can reflect absolute sincerity. This is above all

an art by which he may tell the truth to himself and
God. Its major devices are not traditional figures but
psychological gestures and movements.[31]

In "0 My Boatman" the speaker's longing for spiritual nourishment, his fear of death and destruction, are indices to his psychological state. As the poem progresses we see the changes that are wrought on it by the very utterance of this prayer-poem. The invocation of God as Boatman heralds a change in his outlook and what begins as a cri de coeur is transformed, almost imperceptibly, into a song of praise. Towards the close of the poem the speaker seems already half-lost in contemplation, absorbed by the "Ocean of Compassion." The final two lines of the poem confirm this impression. While either one may be considered logically sufficient to close the poem, the two lines in conjunction, with their interlocking repetitive structure a rocking rhythm appropriate to the boat-suggest a completeness and harmony that is no longer prayer but its fruit. A rearrangement of the lines discloses that their message of union or lostness in God subsists in both their horizontal and vertical patterning:

In You         I lose        myself
My all        in You        I lose