I do not attach much importance to the publication or non publication of my poetry and never have done. Most of it (the published part) appeared five, ten, fifteen or even thirty or more years after they were written. The few recently published in magazines (not all of them new, e.g. the sonnets) owed their fate to Nolini's eagerness and not to my initiative. But the vast bulk of what I have written (long poems mostly) lies on shelf and in drawer, most of it for more than a decade, awaiting either dissolution or an interminable revision or total recasting which at the present rate may well retain them there a decade or two more. But that is my own idiosyncrasy—it cannot be a rule or example for others.
Who art thou in the heart comrade of man who sitst August, watching his works, watching his joys and griefs, Unmoved, careless of pain, careless of death and fate? Witness, what hast thou seen watching this great blind world Moving helpless in Time, whirled on the Wheel in Space, That yet thou with thy vast Will biddest toil our hearts, Mystic,—for without thee nothing can last in Time? We too, when from the urge ceaseless of Nature turn Our souls, far from the breast casting her tool, desire, Grow like thee. In the front Nature still drives in vain The blind trail of our acts, passions and thoughts and hopes; Unmoved, calm, we look on, careless of death and fate, Of grief careless and joy,—signs of a surface script Without value or sense, steps of an aimless world. Something watches behind, Spirit or Self or Soul, Viewing Space and its toil, waiting the end of Time. Witness, who then art thou, one with thee who am I, Nameless, watching the Wheel whirl across Time and Space?
More >>
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.