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
Avatar Meher Baba Bhopal Center
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