Sri Chinmoy Poetry Festival
in a garden-like meditative setting
The Sri Chinmoy Poetry Festival is a real festival traditionally held every summer in New York City. The first Festival was held in 2009. The 2020 focus was Voices of Hope shared here on the Festival’s website since we had to forego meeting together that summer. The Festival’s focus is the spiritual poetry of the great “student of peace” for which it is named but it encompasses a broader exploration of life through the arts. Read More
Praise for Sri Chinmoy’s Poetry
Professor Anisuzzaman
Professor Emeritus Anisuzzaman (University of Dhaka) praises Sri Chinmoy. “The spiritual quest of Sri Chinmoy turned him also towards the creative arts–music, painting and poetry. The verses collected in Premaloker Kanan, and the English version of the same by Sri Chinmoy himself under the title, The Garden of Love-Light (produced as a single bilingual volume), reflect the deep emotion and introspection of their creator. In diction, metaphor and metre they remind the reader of the tradition of Bengali mystic poems, yet the mark of Sri Chinmoy’s individual thoughts and feelings is obvious. His message of humanity and love in this time of strife and stress will surely inspire the readers to walk the path of peace and friendship for all.”
Professor Bassabi Fraser
“The title The Garden of Love-Light encapsulates what lies within – a warm, refreshing poetic space that has the resplendence of a rainbow, replete with imagery and a cadence that stays with the reader like a deeply moving raga, long after its rendition. The collection is a musician’s inspiration, a painter’s reverie, a philosopher’s illumination and a devotee’s restorative delight. Its bilingual presentation, with its East-West bridge-building expansiveness, is imbued with a love of humanity and a universalism that make the reader feel Sri Chinmoy’s presence as a truly sustaining force.”
Professor Bashabi Fraser, Director, Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland
Janaka Alan Spence
“Premaloker Kanan (The Garden of Love-Light) is an early collection of poem-songs by the great seer-poet Sri Chinmoy, and that makes the scale of its achievement all the more remarkable. This new edition brings together for the first time Sri Chinmoy’s original Bengali verses and his own English translations, and the effect is thrilling. Not mere transliterations, the English versions have a quality and character all of their own, and stand alone as poems in their own right, reimagined, made new. Like all of Sri Chinmoy’s subsequent work (and his poetic output was vast) they are instructional, uplifting, inspiring – mantric in their power. Imbued with a rare lyricism and innate musicality, they speak to the searching mind and the crying heart. “
Professor Alan Spence, Professor Emeritus, School of Language and Literature, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, The Edinburgh Makar/Poet Laureate of the City of Edinburgh
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye
In these days of endless bad news, with the “cord of wild restlessness” wrapping ’round us daily, it is easy to feel deeply hungry for “infinity’s lustre” – calming, abiding images and invocations to hearten our spirits. No matter how religious one is or is not, the essential luminosity of Sri Chinmoy’s spirit and fervor feels compelling, refreshing and profoundly hopeful. His poems are always attentive to a deeper call, awakening and stirring his readers. They help us be more silent “in the grove (of our minds)” as well as better witnesses with our own words.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Poet, novelist and songwriter
Professor Kusumita P. Pederson
Kusumita P. Pederson, Professor Emerita of Religious Studies, St. Francis College, New York
The publication of this collection of Sri Chinmoy’s early poems is an occasion for rejoicing, especially in this dual-language edition. His Bengali lyrics, with his own translations into English, are an essential part of his extensive body of work. These are mystical poems of unique depth and power. I first encountered them more than forty years ago, and they remain ever new and fresh in their capacity to move and illumine the reader.
Treasured Poems by Sri Chinmoy
Favorites Selected by His Students from Across the Globe
Material things age and ache.
Spiritual things grow and glow.
And my God-hunger
Is a birthless and deathless thing.
Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 1
Chosen by Nayana (New York, USA)
***
Peace, I feel, peace I give, bliss I become.
God has made my life-breath His Victory-Drum.
I sing and sail, I sail and sing.
God’s Tears of Joy and Pride I bring.
Sri Chinmoy, A Heart of Peace
Chosen by Ashok (Goa, India)
***
I fly on the wings of morning
To see in Heaven God’s Beauty.
I fly on the wings of noon
To see on earth God’s Power.
I fly on the wings of evening
To feel in my heart God’s Silence.
I fly on the wings of evening
To feel in my heart God’s Silence.
I fly on the wings of night
To feel in my soul God’s Bliss.
Sri Chinmoy, The Dance of Life, Part 3
Chosen by Karpani (Moscow, Russia)
***
Beyond speech and mind,
Into the river of ever-effulgent Light
My heart dives.
Today thousands of doors, closed for millennia,
Are opened wide.
Sri Chinmoy, Supreme, Teach Me How to Surrender
Chosen by Abhijatri, (Johannesburg, South Africa)
More Treasured Poems
In fire and water,
In dust and atoms,
Seeing You, Your Meditation-Trance,
Many poets have depicted
Your immortal Beauty.
They are my pioneers.
This morning I am weaving the garland
Of soulful words:
Victory, victory, victory
To the Guru Supreme of the Universe.
Repeating this incantation
We shall conquer the world-soul.
Sri Chinmoy, Supreme, Teach Me How to Cry
Chosen by Suchana (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
***
We are the Pilgrims of the Lord Supreme
On the Path of Infinity.
At this time we have broken asunder
Obstruction’s door.
We have broken asunder the night
Of tenebrous darkness, inconscience
And the eternal, indomitable fear of death.
The Boat of the supernal Light’s Dawn
Is beckoning us,
And the World-Pilot
Of the hallowed bond of Love Divine
Is beckoning us.
The Liberator’s Hands are drawing us
To the Ocean of the great Unknown.
Having conquered the life-breath
Of the Land of Immortality,
And carrying aloft the Banner
Of the Lord Supreme,
We shall return:
We, the drops and flames
Of Transformation-Light.
Sri Chinmoy, My Flute
Chosen by Ashcharjya (Paris, France)
***
How will you know
If you are divine?
You will know
If you are divine
When you discover
That without your body’s Himalayan achievements
The world can exist –
But not without your soul’s
One little smile.
Sri Chinmoy, I Need Only God
Chosen by Pradipana (Frankfurt, Germany)
***
A soulful heart
Has discovered a supreme truth:
To meditate on God
Is a privilege
And not a duty.
Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 9
Chosen by Dule, (Zlin, Czech Republic)
More Treasured Poems
By whose touch the lily smiles
And opens its beauty-bud?
Whose beauty’s moonlight
Do I see in the lily?
Who is the Eye of my eye?
Who is the Heart of my heart?
Alas, why do I not see Him,
His Face of transcendental Beauty,
Even in my dreams?
Sri Chinmoy, Supreme, Teach Me How to Cry
Chosen by Kamaneeya (Novi Sad, Serbia)
***
Hope
Thou art my Lord, my golden dream,
Thou art my life in death.
O bless me with Thy Hope Supreme,
Lord of the Eternal Breath!
Agelong the vision of Thy Sun
For darkness have I sought.
I know the evils I should shun
And quickly bring to nought.
The earth is deaf and blind, my Lord;
Its true goal it denies.
It hears no voice, no heavenly word
From those who seek the skies.
O yet I feel Thy kingly Grace
With my feeble mortality.
I shall win at last the Noonward Race,
Plunge in the Nectar-Sea.
Sri Chinmoy, My Flute
Chosen by Sevananda (San Juan, Puerto Rico and New York, USA)
****
An iota of gratitude
The seeker’s offering
Of an iota of gratitude to God
Is as beautiful as a rose
Held by God in His own Hand.
Sri Chinmoy, The Caged Bird and the Uncaged Bird
Chosen by Devaki (Montreal, Canada)
***
Some of these poems were translated by Sri Chinmoy from his Bengali original. He also set some of these to music, as he did to many of his Bengali and English poems.