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Dane Rudhyar Toronto, 1917. Age 22. 
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From Rhapsodies 1916-1918 CLOTURE Destiny slid through the narrow door, the door one suspects yet cannot see so pale it is. Destiny slid along the high walls there hung in chains ghosts of days of love — and with a gesture freed them. And when she came near the table where the Now was writing itself she said: "It is I." The silence weighed oppressively as if all there was had stopped. And the hand writing the chapter traced the word: END. And I went away. From Resonances 1924-29 23. NOW COMES THE MOMENT Now comes the moment of Soul. Years have passed of search, of contingencies, of hopes and stillborn deeds. It has been a good fight, clean and fair. Now, as if death were near, I stand facing the wall that may open, strong at heart, ready for the confrontation. I may fail yet am not afraid of failure. I may win yet court no victory. I have but one aim: to fulfill my destiny whatever the means, whatever the fruits, whatever the path. I contemplate the past from which I emerged: my record. Nothing seems useless now nothing wasted, nothing that could be otherwise. Satisfaction? This would be meaningless. There is never "enough"; but what is IS. To that I assent. Utter calmness, indifference even. It does not matter. It is not "matter". It is not one thing or the other. It is I, that am all. For this minute I am all, because poised in destiny, unified in destiny, a uniqueness which is Allness, a void transparent to fullness. It is all there. It matters not that I cannot spell the names. When all names are told at once they become meaningless; they become power. Because I am power that is total I desire nothing. How could I? To desire is to admit lack of power. But to him that is power as destiny, death is open. He marches into it towards the Soul. I am marching on, my friends, into my space and my silence. It is as if I were all open, open like an ever-receding sky. It is so quiet I can sense the heart beats of multitudes of destinies. I am poised in all destinies. From White Thunder 1932-38 HYMN TO SHIVA O Mahadeva! Lord of the Burning Ground, consume thou me with thy power. Exalt me by destroying me. Burn my limitations into the boundless flame of thy might. Ravage my heart with the torrid passion of thy equators. Scorch my eyes with the fire of thy own Eye triumpher over forms. Tear it open, mine Eye. Tear it aflame, that it may rejoice in the holocaust of names. Crash open the gates of my sanctuary and let the tone of me reverberate through space, thy own boundless wastes, electric with raging fire. Lord of the Holy Ones! Lord of affirmations whose magnificence soars with the black wings of endless denials! Lord of the non-human that is greater manhood . . . my Master! I come as an infant light flickering through the obscure path of thy visitation. I come with insecure steps and heart bewildered to give up my search to thy certitude, my darkness to mould into some strong chalice where thy flame may burn and thy magnitude condense for the sake of unborn that crave for electric breath. Oh! rend thou me into my Pentecost, tongue of fire that scars the rich field to the earth. I will go forth through the wounded plains, cauterize deeper the gangrene of self. I will light on all peaks fires of eternal St. John. And when the day shall have passed and all men tear aflame across starless wastes to the void of thee, then, 0 Beloved! I shall ascend into thy Nothing, and rejoice into thine indifference. HYMN TO AGNI Out of the depth of Fire rises He who has no name. His chariot flames forth with the splendor of noon day suns. Cataracts of light excoriates the path over which rides the tumult of his red stallions. His face is like seas of molten gold. It glows with the incandescence of vast ice-fields struck by dazzling light. Agni! Agni! Lord of the ever-burning Heart! Let me behold thy glory. Let me bathe in thine ecstasy. Exalt me beyond the Shining Ones. Verily thou art the Life of all beings. Thou singest chants of torrid fervor in the souls of thy beloved. Thou art the Mighty and the Effulgent. I warm my love at the foot-prints of thy coursers. My eyes glow with the fire they once caught from beholding thee. O Thou, of whom all the worlds are the shadow, Agni, Lord of gods! Bless my darkness. From Resurgence I 1954-58 THE TEST Through the Master, the mastery speaks; through the flame, the fire burns; through all worlds, space is revealed. O seeker after ultimates, will you strive to reach the Master? Is your heart entranced by the flame? Do you still hunger for substance? Or will your emptiness call for mastery to speak through, for the fire to burn through, for space to find in you a focus for the ever-new birth of ever-renewed worlds? From Resurgence II 1957-58 THEURGY The tonitruant grandeur of inescapable passion burst into cataracts of light through the human soul ravenous with theurgic apocalypses. Give me infinite space and I shall make cosmoi effulgent with irresistible solutions of power! Give me catapults of flaming cycles, and I shall whirl through cosmic dust prologomena to stars nurtured by the matricial logic of galaxies! Give me faith and restlessness, and I shall evoke the magnificent insanity of all-conquering man. Give me man at white heat, and I shall induce God! The tonitruant grandeur of human cataclysms stills into Indestructible seeds of mind pregnant with apocalyptic poems of divinity.
Read Rudhyar's Concerning My Poetry
Reprinted by permission of Leyla Rudhyar Hill Copyright © 1967 by Dane Rudhyar and Copyright © 2001 by Leyla Rudhyar Hill. All Rights Reserved.  mail@khaldea.com |Home|About|Calendar|Ephemeris| |Charts|Art Gallery|Library|Resources| |Shop|Links|Rudhyar Archival Project|Help| Web design and all data, text and graphics appearing on this site are protected by US and International Copyright and are not to be reproduced, distributed, circulated, offered for sale, or given away, in any form, by any means, electronic or conventional. See Notices for full copyright statement and conditions of use. Web design copyright © 2001 by Michael R. Meyer. All Rights Reserved. |
