Savitri – Eine Legende und ein Symbol. Sri Aurobindo

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      A body seeing the end too soon of joy

      And the fragile happiness of its mortal love.

      Her quiet visage still and sweet and calm,

      Her graceful daily acts were now a mask;

      In vain she looked upon her depths to find

      A ground of stillness and the spirit’s peace.

      Still veiled from her was the silent Being within

      Who sees life’s drama pass with unmoved eyes,

      Supports the sorrow of the mind and heart

      And bears in human breasts the world and fate.

      A glimpse or flashes came, the Presence was hid.

      Only her violent heart and passionate will

      Were pushed in front to meet the immutable doom;

      Defenceless, nude, bound to her human lot

      They had no means to act, no way to save.

      These she controlled, nothing was shown outside:

      She was still to them the child they knew and loved;

      The sorrowing woman they saw not within.

      No change was in her beautiful motions seen:

      A worshipped empress all once vied to serve,

      She made herself the diligent serf of all,

      Nor spared the labour of broom and jar and well,

      Or close gentle tending or to heap the fire

      Of altar and kitchen, no slight task allowed

      To others that her woman’s strength might do.

      In all her acts a strange divinity shone:

      Into a simplest movement she could bring

      A oneness with earth’s glowing robe of light,

      A lifting up of common acts by love.

      All-love was hers and its one heavenly cord

      Bound all to all with her as golden tie.

      But when her grief to the surface pressed too close,

      These things, once gracious adjuncts of her joy,

      Seemed meaningless to her, a gleaming shell,

      Or were a round mechanical and void,

      Her body’s actions shared not by her will.

      Always behind this strange divided life

      Her spirit like a sea of living fire

      Possessed her lover and to his body clung,

      One locked embrace to guard its threatened mate.

      At night she woke through the slow silent hours

      Brooding on the treasure of his bosom and face,

      Hung o’er the sleep-bound beauty of his brow

      Or laid her burning cheek upon his feet.

      Waking at morn her lips endlessly clung to his,

      Unwilling ever to separate again

      Or lose that honeyed drain of lingering joy,

      Unwilling to loose his body from her breast,

      The warm inadequate signs that love must use.

      Intolerant of the poverty of Time

      Her passion catching at the fugitive hours

      Willed the expense of centuries in one day

      Of prodigal love and the surf of ecstasy;

      Or else she strove even in mortal time

      To build a little room for timelessness

      By the deep union of two human lives,

      Her soul secluded shut into his soul.

      After all was given she demanded still;

      Even by his strong embrace unsatisfied,

      She longed to cry, “O tender Satyavan,

      O lover of my soul, give more, give more

      Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov’st.

      Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep

      That thrills to thee the message of my heart.

      For soon we part and who shall know how long

      Before the great wheel in its monstrous round

      Restore us to each other and our love?”

      Too well she loved to speak a fateful word

      And lay her burden on his happy head;

      She pressed the outsurging grief back into her breast

      To dwell within silent, unhelped, alone.

      But Satyavan sometimes half understood,

      Or felt at least with the uncertain answer

      Of our thought-blinded hearts the unuttered need,

      The unplumbed abyss of her deep passionate want.

      All of his speeding days that he could spare

      From labour in the forest hewing wood

      And hunting food in the wild sylvan glades

      And service to his father’s sightless life

      He gave to her and helped to increase the hours

      By the nearness of his presence and his clasp,

      And lavish softness of heart-seeking words

      And the close beating felt of heart on heart.

      All was too little for her bottomless need.

      If in his presence she forgot awhile,

      Grief filled his absence with its aching touch;

      She saw the desert of her coming days

      Imaged in every solitary hour.

      Although with a vain imaginary bliss

      Of fiery union through death’s door of escape

      She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame,

      She knew she must not clutch that happiness

      To die with him and follow, seizing his robe

      Across our other countries, travellers glad

      Into the sweet or terrible Beyond.

      For those sad parents still would need her here

      To help the empty remnant of their day.

      Often it seemed to her the ages’ pain

      Had pressed their quintessence into her single woe,

      Concentrating in her a tortured world.

      Thus in the silent chamber of her soul

      Cloistering her love to live with secret grief

      She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods

      Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days,

      Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense,

      Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.

      Yet ever they grew into each other more

      Until it seemed no power could rend apart,

      Since even the body’s walls could not divide.

      For when he wandered