Poems by Themis

Introduction

Asked — rather honoured — to introduce this collection of poems, I cannot begin better than by repeating what I wrote to their author in 1951 when they first came to me in typescript:

"You are a very fine poet. You have a genuine gift spontaneously sustained over years and some of your pieces are of absolutely first-rate quality. And this quality is not only exquisiteness: there is a distinct vein of what must be called greatness — that is to say, the thought, the vision, the emotion have both weight and depth and are carried to us on a rhythmic tone bringing a touch of some infinite which suggests a beyond to all that can be uttered. Often your expression is, as you have put it in your letter to me, "quiet" — but nobody can mistake your quietness for absence of the stately, the wide-ranged, the deep-plunging. No doubt, your style is mainly lyrical and not ostensibly epical, nor are you markedly dynamic as a rule, but there can be not only lyrical largeness coupled with intensity but also a lyricism quietly commanding as well as intense and such lyricism can, in addition, keep mostly its exquisiteness in front without ceasing to offer its own greatness."

Looking across the forty years and odd that have elapsed since I wrote these words, I do not find any reason to change my view. Nowhere in the mass of work given for publication, covering various moods and occasions, is any failure. Oriented to the presence of the Divine Beloved everywhere, the expression rings true to my ear in all kinds of keys. I note gentle whisperings at times, a low-pitched language yet never a lack of felicity — as in the subtle phrase,

... a smile the very soul's caress —

or else a homely turn of communication lights up with an inner truth:

When marketings are over,

Your charities unfold,

And touch the bowls of beggars

And fill them with your gold.

Then there is a note of sudden power springing a surprise of both travail and triumph of the spirit:

The pathway of the darkness bends and breaks Within abysses of eternal suns.

The same kind of surprise meets us in the thrilled violence of

When all your life has gone to pieces

Smashed on the stillness of your soul.

The inner being, the inner response, the inner light: these are the predominant motives of the inspiration of Themis's book. All of them are unforgettably suggested in the stanza:

There's just one treasure worth your buying,

Beyond all splendours you may find,

Within the tumult and the crying —

The silence of the sunlit mind.

The last phrase has lingered in my memory for years and again and again a prayer to the very divinity whom Themis has worshipped and worded has formed on my lips in her own language:

O wizard Love, Enchanter, Thou,

Unweave the darkness, place

Thy stars of peace upon my brow.

Thy sun-truth on my face.

10.12.1993

Amal Kiran

(K. D. Sethna)

TO MOTHER