THE BELOVED IS ALL IN ALL

In this section we focus on this remarkable last collection of Brabazon’s poetry. It was published posthumously in 1988.

We present some comments on all the individual poems which it is hoped will expand with insights and appreciations from other readers over time.

Many of these poems have been set to music by various composers and have become much loved songs. But this poetry does not need music in order to sing. Responses from head and heart can enliven and explicate it for others so that it becomes part of a living heritage.

INTO THE WORD

You should utter words as though heaven were opened
within them and as though you did not put the word into
your mouth, but as though you entered into the word. (Hasidic Saying)

This may sound a little crazy in the modern world of Twitter, but it still holds good when we approach the sacred through poetry. It applies to prayer and to the poetry which reveals the divine within us.

Out of His silence Meher Baba still conveyed the vital importance of the word in God Speaks.

TO WHAT DOES THE HEART RESPOND IN A BRABAZON POEM?

First to its confidence: its confidence not in the possession of knowledge but in its hammering that truth is to be found only in complete submission to the will of God. From this it follows that poetry comes out of our poverty and need.

Now that the various religious traditions have to confront each other, can’t dodge it, the way forward is not through antagonistic affirmations. Our only course is to face our own poverty and the need for Grace. Life is a sleep, a dream, a trance until it becomes a sacred drama. And the drama is for Brabazon the emptying, the imploring from our helplessness, the feeling of need which creates the true dynamic of life.

THE POETRY THAT STRIPS ILLUSION

In the poems he wrote during the years he was living with his Master in India there is an intensity that arrests and even appals. They convey a love that expects nothing, no reward either material or spiritual. This is the poetry of destitution which is as radical as the world of Samuel Beckett, a search for an elusive Being that cannot be attained and where he must just go on waiting. But in Brabazon the word does not fade away to a murmur of hollow voices. The force of his love drives him on. This intensity confronts us with our own plight but with an energy that awakens. Despair and absurdity are embraced under the conviction that gives his last volume its title, The Beloved is All in All. (See as an example Poem 5)