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0 MY MIND-SONG

0 my mind-song,
I have sung you many, many times.
I am now bored.
I now want to unlearn you.

0 my heart-song,
I have not sung you even once.
I am now all eagerness.
I am now crying and dying to learn you.     (no. 507)

By scattering these poems throughout the series, as opposed to confining them to a particular volume based on thematic organisation, the poet is able to establish the impression of a commingling of elements. Like the dancing, flickering movement of a fire, we see now one theme, now another; at times the goal seems nearer, at times infinitely removed.

If we search in Sri Chinmoy's poems for an ordered spiritual progression or diary of man's journey to God, then we shall not find it. We cannot consult the poems in any measured sequence, as we would an almanac, for that is not the way of the artist. What is said once can never be finished or exhausted for, if that were so, we should need no rejuvenating elixir for our deepest spiritual beliefs. "The wise poets with their words shape the One Being in many ways," affirms the Rig Vedic poet.[10] Sri Chinmoy has instinctively selected the beauteous images of poetry to embody his soul-vision. His luminous perception of man's inner life has spontaneously expanded into 1,300 branches. Endless are the variations he brings to our understanding of the mind and the heart, desire and aspiration, bondage and freedom, love, devotion and surrender to God. And even as his response is mobile, so the poems acquire a dynamic charge-nothing is static, no feeling jaded or time-worn. Again, although the poet establishes a clear kinship with the Vedic tradition, there is no sense that he is weighted down by the conventions or achievements of this former age. A genuine poet, he is always faithful to personal inspiration and always in search of truth: