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This expansion or enlargement of the self through identification and oneness
cannot occur when the ego is ascendant for it is a process that is based
on a supreme form of empathy, antipathetic to the domain of ego.
Placing Sri Chinmoy's English poems alongside his translations from the Bengali
songs, one can discern two distinctive and complementary forces at play.
One might almost refer to them as a classical and a romantic strain. While
there is a degree of overlapping between the two areas, it is instructive
to broadly classify the English poems as poetry of statement and the song
translations as poetry of search.
The English poems tend to express truth-messages in an extremely compressed
and sculptured manner. Sharing many of the qualities of aphorism, they reveal
the most profound wisdom within their narrow compass. The words of these
poems emit a certain leonine fire which charges their content with vigour
and brilliance.
The songs, by contrast, are more lyrical than aphoristic. They generally
express transient moods rather than eternal truths. Their outer form has
a slender grace, the words are limpid and transparent. Like a flight of birds,
they pass across the vast backdrop of realisation expressed by the poet in
his poems of statement.
The bird and the lion, the search and the arrival, becoming and being-between
these poles the poetry moves, encompassing man's spiritual journey in its
entirety.
In 1977 Sri Chinmoy was engaged in writing a series of short rhyming poems
in English. The result was A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile, a volume
of 630 poems varying in length from two to eighteen lines. The following
year, Sri Chinmoy completed From the Source to the Source, containing 401
rhyming poems also of comparative length. Through these two volumes, Sri
Chinmoy hoped to surmount the difficulties raised by the English language
with respect to rhyme. Accustomed to the Bengali language, with its natural
propensity for rhyme, Sri Chinmoy brought to this new endeavour an unselfconscious
and self-delighting spirit; which is captured in the following couplet
