[I’m posting here the text of Sri Aurobindo’s sonnet Adwaita as we have in his Collected Poems, p. 153. The accompanying painting, illustrating the first stanza, is by Huta. It is taken from her Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's Poems which appears in the latest electronic newsletter SABDA eNews, dated 20 December 2007.

The review of Huta's book can be accessed at sabda e-news

The painting is the copyright of Huta Hindocha—RYD]

 

I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon

Where Shankaracharya's tiny temple stands

Facing Infinity from Time's edge, alone

On the bare ridge ending earth's vain romance.
 

Around me was a formless solitude:

All had become one strange Unnamable,

An unborn sole Reality world-nude,

Topless and fathomless, for ever still.
 

A Silence that was Being's only word,

The unknown beginning and the voiceless end

Abolishing all things moment-seen or heard,

On an incommunicable summit reigned,
 

A lonely Calm and void unchanging Peace

On the dumb crest of Nature's mysteries.

 

 

19 October 1939

 

Shankaracharya's tiny temple

Pictures of Sri Aurobindo's Poems

© Huta D. Hindocha

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