Hymn to God The Man


Francis Brabazon
See footnote to know more about Francis Brabazon and his work.

 

Beloved God,

All the earth is singing you

In the impermanent materials of stone, leaf, heart:

Singing you, yearning you, leaning towards

Your reaping.

 

God-the-father-the-son of yourself:

Whole God: Perfect Man.

Cherisher of the sap in all things;

Destroyer of the worn-out, the false of all things;

Releaser of the love in all things, which,

Locked in the prison of heart, in leaf and stone,

Raises itself in longing towards your reaping.

 

You are the perennial and glorious Avatar,

The human and the lovely Rasool,

The sudden and beautiful Christ

Who stoops to Man-state and walks the earth

Carrying the cross of our violences

Of our little stupidities of progress

To other than God --- our own perfect Self state ---

(For we have ever turned for that which we most passionately desired,

And hated that which we most dearly loved) ---

Carrying your cross,

Talking intimately with your disciples as their brother

Teaching them, nourishing them as their master,

Cracking a joke as you pause to wipe the sweat from your lovely forehead.

 

God Man: Whole God, Perfect man to us now,

And to the Cavemen in remote pre-history

Full of love for you --- knowing your voice

In the waters, in the fire and the wind; and before this,

to civilizations to Cavemen to civilizations

Millions of times --- back to the time of your creating

Man and Earth and the universe out of your Whim of self-knowing ---

Spanning the immensity of time

In one moment of your perfect Manhood,

Ever, beloved, would we be eagles of praise to you;

Ever are we dust trying to sing our glory.

 

How beautiful you are !

What a dreaming in the dawn is your brow!

What oceans of love are your eyes!

What music of our new singing is in your throat!

What a proud new architecture is in your hands!

How perfectly shaped are your feet for our beyond-journeying!

The symmetry of your body is the assurance of our well-being.

You are the song of all singers who have ever sung.

You are the tenderness of lovers of all time.

The line of your mouth is the direction of our journey.

The curve of your cheek is the contour of our containment.

In your fingers is the cunning of all works we shall make:

In your eyes the love of all our loving.


How marvelous was your creating.

From the thread of Nothingness you wove

The vast universe and this little earth

And Man: all because you did not know who you were

And had the whim to know yourself

As whole God, as perfect Man:

Out of absolutely Nothing this seeming Something

Contained within your EVERYTHING!

 

Oh, the long way from the stars' first singing:

The long pain from the time you broke out of your imprisonment in stone

And crept up, age after age, to Man-state ---

Yourself your own image of you

Perfectly sculptured, articulated for self-knowing.

Your ear eager for your voice, your eye for sight of you.

How dense you were in the hard denseness, stone-locked

In your dreams of yourself as stone.

How tree-rooted you became --- thrusting upwards

Spreading out gropingly towards your infinity.

How feeble you were as worm;

How silently you glided through swamps

Through the grass as serpent seeking yourself;

As a lizard scurried and stretched yourself in the sun.

How you fish-swam in the shallow waters

Seeking yourself; dived down deep in your ocean;

Scaled waterfalls seeking yourself in the highest waters.

How an animal you longed in animal-longing for yourself:

Crashing out of the jungle trumpeting like the rising sun;

Howling across frozen steppes;

Crying in the fox-cry like a child in distress in the night;

Bull-bellowed bull-staring into the sunset,

Pawing the earth, longing intensely for yourself;

Proudly over plains lord of the world;

Stealthily at night through silent forests suddenly alive.

The stood up beating your breast

Unable to endure not being Man.

 

Then you became Man. And how great was your Fall!

You had hammered out on the anvil of time your true shape ---

By means of which you could know Who you were.

But you forgot all about the long way and the long pain

And why you had had the fortitude to endure it.

You dithered about digging in the earth, examining

What you found; stared at stars --- wondering;

Beguiled by what you had already been.

Made wars --- instead of war on yourself;

Always conquering, conquering --- but not your own nature.

What a gainsaying of the long way and the long pain !

 

But eventually you turned,

And took your stand in the puzzle and seethe of yourself

And became your own Hero and fought your way

Out of the tangle of flesh and the drift of stars:

Found out the backward path that leads forward to Self

Across the terrible shining planes of your own Energy

And its allurements and enchantments; stormed Mind,

Destroyed mind and its delusion of other than Self:

Proved the seeming of everything to be nothing ---

Nothing but your Dream of other-than-yourself.

And became yourself, Whole God. And returned

To earth as Perfect Man. And taught us

The law, and the love, and the way to self, to Truth.

Millions of times in your compassion you have come to us;

Borne the cross of our rejection and violence

And waited with vast patience the extent of our folly ---

Of our little greeds and progress to other than Self.

And now again you have walked the earth.

But as the moment of your glory drew near,

The talk with your disciples died in your lips

And the swift glances fled from your eyes.

Your brow was a sea of concrete in which no green thing lived

Your body was all the steel of the world

Made into a Cross on which you hung and waited

The eternity of the precise moment of your Word

Which was our Destroying and Renewal

And the again-path for our stubborn feet.

 

How the glory of your brow is the light of our safe journeying!

The love of your eyes is the mirror of our revealment

And the certainty of our arrival.

How glorious you are as Man; how helpless as God:

So helpless that you could not hide your Godhood

Even behind the walls of your pain.

How very Man you are.

How absolutely God.

 

From the "The Word at the World's End" by Francis Brabazon, John F. Kennedy University Press Berkely 1971. Francis Brabazon was one of Meher Baba's close disciples and dedicated his life singing Baba's praise and serving him. He was a great poet who wrote on the only subject worth writing about - Baba. He wrote many books, each of which is a priceless jewel, teeming with sublime emotion - drenched in pure love.

His love and devotion for Beloved Meher Baba was matchless. So was his poetry.

You can share your thoughts on this poem with me (Chinmaya Rathore) at csrathore@vsnl.com


 

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