For me the province of poetry is a private ecstasy made public, and the social role of the poet is to display moments of shared universal epiphanies capable of healing our sense of mortal estrangement—from ourselves, from each other, from our source, from our destiny, from The Divine.
The touchstone here is any who hears the Name of Allah turns to gold or in the case of the heart a river
A sapling becomes a tree in an instant the eye a seer centuries old or in the case of the greedy a giver
He suffices for all that we have or do light or dark heat or cold and all that’s not truly us we sever
Call it Truth or simply Belief something we’ve bought that was sold that rather than be a stone we’re a believer
But our days have been burnished to greater shine opening after opening fold after fold And of what we could not do before we deliver __________________________________________ 4/17/2013 (from The Soul’s Home, in progress)
I’ve got a window up my sleeve and a door in my shirt I can open any time to walk out into the blue. Arch my arm and see meadows, sunbursts, vistas. Pantaloons of mileage, shoes of market silver, windy hair from lunar rocky mountaintops shagging this way and that like a semaphore signaling which road to come in on, which circuitous loop to take to the interior.
All this from being in the Land of Marvelous Vision, Place of Collapsing Mirrors, the spiral staircase from heaven to earth down which, in diaphanous gowns of mist, come tall ladies of supernatural beauty with cats’ eyes and lips of lapis lazuli.
I saw a blind man pick up a crystal and see through it to the ends of the earth.
I saw a protean bird change shape a hundred times and end up a small boy with red shovel standing in sand.
My beloved’s eyes put a second moon in orbit, my beloved’s lips send shivers across Jupiter’s hills, my beloved’s heartbeats drumming rhythms in Pluto’s clouds balance on sharp mountaintops before scudding off into
[NOTE: This is a poem from the great late Mexican poet (1935-2009) Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, whom I met and learned so much from on my first extended visit to Mexico in the early 1960s, at the ripe age of 21 or so. A totally committed, ardent, inspired visionary poet and painter (a kind of creative sideline for him), with a real and deep natural ability to conjure connections between disparate images and essences and in a kind of magisterial, Baroque and somehow ancient Mexican Indian language, he could bring a world of associations to life. This is one of his early poems, and I've cherished it over the many years, trying my hand at translating it, but always open to amendments and corrections. My Spanish is good but I'm never quite sure I've gotten the grammar just right, or the tone and "exact" word. If such can be, in translation... which I totally believe in, from any language, with all its faults.)
ESTABLISHING ENTHUSIASM
O enthusiasm, singer! You crack the crypt of trills
with loudest racket and greediest song!
Your power the sunrise that unfurls its flags over a hill,
the sky that dumps its purple baskets over a ravenous precipice,
the foliage of bells you ignite in an enchanted wood.
For you who lights up my confidence,
I clear brambles away from the path and remove traps as they turn green.
This time, for you who bobs on the great ocean swell
as frail as a turtledove’s bones,
as vulnerable as a wall of geraniums,
as fragile as a warrior who defies an avalanche
with the radiant holy wafer of his shield,
I braid my enamored offering.
For you who possesses the necessary password to rule in the Southern Cross,
the first to hurl yourself between creaking rafters
and escape from the night of the world by a frayed cable,
for you, unique word, solar incarnation of all miracles,
I stretch the stalactites of poetry all the way to the ground
and ignite the heart of mankind with strange bolts of lightning.
_________________________________________________
Marco Antonio Montes de Oca / translated by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
___________________________
FUNDACIÓN DEL ENTUSIASMO
Oh entusiasmo cantor, tú rompes la bóveda de trinos
con el bullicio más alto y la canción más ávida.
Tu fuerza es el amanecer que flaquea sobre la colina,
el firmamento que descarga sus moradas cestas en el hambriento precipicio
y el follaje de campanas que prendes en la selva encantada.
Para ti que iluminas mi confianza,
desbrozo el camino y retiro las verdeantes trampas.
Para ti que fluyes en la gran marejada,
que eres tan débil como un hueso de tórtola,
tan vulnerable como la barda de geranios
y frágil como el guerrero que desafía el alúd
con la sola y brillante oblea de su escudo,
trenzo esta vez mi ofrenda enamorada.
Para ti que posees la contraseña requerida para reinar en la Cruz del Sur;
que te lanzas el primero entre las vigas crujientes,
que escapas de la alta noche del mundo por un cable luido;
para ti, palabra única, encarnación solar de todos los milagros
estiro hasta el suelo las límpidas estalactitas de la poesía
y toco con extrañas ráfagas el corazón del hombre.
The song, Nahnu fee Rawdati, from the Diwan of Shaykh ibn al-Habib, raheemullah, sung at a conference in Chicago in the year 2000. This is followed by the poem (full text below) written the night before, here read but incompletely video’d.
Shy hemlocks brash Niagaras
natural things embraced with such articulate
consciousness
we walk by streams hearing their gurgle as they
repeat the Creator’s Name over and over
cranes fly by in their rhapsodic formations
geese honking glory among the cloudless
molecules of the sky each molecule a
communications center where God’s manifest
decrees are sent from one noisy
interior to another
light rays zigzagging everywhere charting their
lateral and diagonal alchemical formulas
transforming uniform darkness into distinct
shades of the rainbow outlined by incantatory lights
a dervish divesting himself of his own plaintive shadows
as he walks down the road noticing even the lowliest
pebbles are hushedly singing not only to each
other but to the bare soles of his feet
each glance is a mouth each glance is an ear
emitting and taking in the most articulate designations
leading back by elegant grammar of each manifest thing
to the Unmanifest Source Who has spoken
each thing into being
flame tips with scarlet lips that
glow in the dark as they speak
windows that gaze onto landscapes of boundless joy
hills that actually sing as they frolic valleys that stretch out on their
quivering backs greening themselves and humming in the solemnly
throbbing sun
God One the Universe One in the
wise mathematics of this singular song
___________________________________
9/30/2000 – Chicago
(from Shaking the Quicksilver Pool, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2009)
Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise;
As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
________________________
Emily Dickinson
(A poem in near or slant rhyme mixed with true or perfect rhyme)
HEART TO HEART IN DEATH’S RUMBLE
A philosopher once I knew
was sitting where the dark dark blue
hits the deeper purple
“I know” he said between pipe puffs “the rings of Saturn wear white cuffs” and winked a dimple
“But at the edge where bright things die
and dark things come to birth why I
can’t know but must stay simple”
He trailed his hand in the swirling brine
as the moon came out with its pale shoeshine
and the air like a thimble
“You see” he said and he seemed quite grim “all life hangs out on a jungle gym
before taking a tumble
I want to be there when it happens” he said “but I also want to take to my bed and stay out of trouble”
Just then a blade from an unknown airborne
something or other fell straight down on that forlorn
fellow and stopped his gabble
His self split in two with a perfect slice
which severed his argument so don’t think twice
about living in a bubble
His spirit shook hands with his body for the last time
and floated free to the land where near rhyme
chimes with all pure things except rubble
Now see each thing in its own bright space
reflecting to us the original Face
as something true and supple
“No second Face” means all is well
with flowering Garden and steaming hell
making opposite ripples
The philosopher’s musings continue to meander
through daffodils and coriander
beyond the querulous gamble
What we might not know in this life – gents –
becomes crystal clear when we pass beyond sense
heart to heart in death’s rumble
______________________________________________________
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
2/7/2006 (from Coattails of the Saint, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2006)
When I pray
the whole world becomes a pair of huge
insect wings behind me, and I am a
standing green insect with metallic
thorax, inhaling distant
zephyrs of intoxicating gas
only a rare breed of
insect can survive,
and when I pray the sky in front of me becomes
light and edged with silver
but the sky behind me becomes gun-metal gray
and filled with heavy storm,
and when I pray
there are negotiations on board ocean liners between
warring countries, and treaties are brought out and
signed in triplicate, and people
bow and shake hands, and an old
mother in knitted shawl next to a
cold stove lets out a deep
sigh and holds her
grandchild closer to her breast,
and when I pray I turn aside from
the chopping block, the gas chamber, the
cocked rifle, the seething self-destructive
hatred in a glance,
swollen knuckles, the poisoned pen,
I turn at an oblique angle to the
political explosion, the downing of airplanes, the
destruction of edible food,
and billows of scarlet velvet blow past the
form of a human standing and facing God
I make when I pray, and
billows like the sails of ancient sailing ships
blow their incandescent white canvas glittering in the
Atlantic sun of new worlds past my
figure of a man standing at the absolute
front edge of his existence, toes on the
prayer carpet, facing God free of all that is
other-than-God
when I pray, and the world becomes
silent when I pray, as silent as the
growing of wood in a thick forest, or the
slow death of an old moose alone on a
hill, or the wheeling of a
young bird in a
sun-drenched sky,
silent as a tomb, but alive, silent as the
sea, but deeper, silent as the
sky, for at the
bottom of the sky, with his forehead touching the
bottom edge, is the
human figure on two straight legs facing
one direction and praying with
one heart of a
person praying, of me when I pray, turned like a
gyroscope, up-ended, twirled in a
great wheel, brought back again to the
upright position, facing
wind and ocean and fire burning down houses
and rain battering roofs and hulls of ships
and mountain-faces fluffy with mountain goats,
and when I pray
the slice comes clean through the terrible drama of
matter, the operatic
tensions of objects clash in space,
the suicidal psychology so intertwined with a
desire for rebirth, and there is a
Rebirth of wonder, a Bromeliad of bright pink
bloom out the middle of the silver green succulent
leaf of the
tropical Bromeliad, and the
prayer is the rebirth of light like live lightning
out the corners of the angles of a two-dimensional darkness
and when I pray I become a
firefly or dragonfly, no, only a
man standing facing forward
to pray.
__________________________________________
3/9/95 (from A Hundred Little 3D Pictures, in preparation)
(Note: I’ve been invited to present a series of eight sessions on poetry, I’m calling The Ecstatic Exchange Seminars on Poetry: Intuitions & Enthusiasms. As a foundational text, I’m using this song from the Diwan of Shaykh ibn al-Habib (raheemullah), which has struck me as being, as well as an all-encompassing directive toward sublimest gnosis, a wonderful Ars Poetica for creative contemplation and heart’s action, as well as writing devotional poetry, or poetry of any kind… )
REFLECTION
Tafakkur
by Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib (may Allah be pleased with him)
Reflect upon the beauty of His artistry on land and sea
And journey through God’s attributes both obvious and hidden
The greatest signs of God’s limitless perfections are found
Within our souls and on the horizons spread across the world
Contemplate all physical forms and behold their structural beauties
In exquisite order like pearls threaded on a string
Journey through the mysteries of human languages and speech
That give voice to what’s hidden deep within our hearts
Contemplate the mysteries of the body’s flexible limbs
And how our hearts command them so often and so easily
As well as the mystery of how our hearts may turn obediently
But then fall back into creeping darkness and transgression
Journey through the earth with all its varieties of plant life
And note how vast are its flatlands and how many its steep ascents
Fathom the mysteries of all the oceans and their fishes
And their numberless waves held back by an unbreachable barrier
Note the mysteries of the winds and how they bring
Both misty fogs and rain clouds streaming down in drops
Travel through the mysteries of all the starry heavens –
The Throne the Footstool and the Spirit sent by God’s Command
Then you will affirm God’s Unity with the totality of your being
And turn away from illusion and vain doubt and all otherness
You will say, “Dear God, You are what I seek!
My impregnable refuge from wrongs injustices and deceit
You – my only Hope in answering all my needs
You – the One who saves me from every evil and every harm
You – the Compassionate One Who answers all who call
You – the wealth that provides the needy in their need
O Sublime One to You I raise my voice in prayer –
Hurry to me the Opening and the Secret O dear God
By the honor of that sublime one all our hopes depend on
On the Day of Distress when we’re assembled at the Gathering
Upon him God’s blessings as long as Gnostics journey
Through the lights of God’s Essence in His every Self Revealing
And his People and Companions and all those who follow
The Divine Commandments by the sweet nobility of his Way.
(version from translations by Aisha Bewley and Abdurrahman Fitzgerald)
______________
(Since this is all a new venture for me, I can only go by stepping stones laid before me, one at a time. This week we watched a nature program in which an actual white (albino) deer appeared. This reminded me of the great poem of Petrarch (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), in which the white deer appears as a symbolic vision. The first example is in prose translation, the second in a version I’ve made from existing translations from the Italian, and the final one a sonnet from Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 11 October 1542), which is based on Petrarch’s sonnet.)
PETRARCH / RHYME SPARSE 190
A white doe on the green grass appeared to me, with two golden
horns, between two rivers, in the shade of a laurel, when the sun
was rising in the unripe season.
Her look was so sweet and proud that to follow her I left every
task, like the miser who as he seeks treasure sweetens his trouble
with delight.
“Let no one touch me,” she bore written with diamonds and
topazes around her lovely neck. “It has pleased my Caesar to
make me free.”
And the sun had already turned at midday; my eyes were tired
by looking but not sated, when I fell into the water, and she
disappeared.
(translated by Robert M. Durling)
FROM PETRARCH
A white doe on green
grass appeared to me with two gold horns
between two rivers in a laurel’s shade,
the sun rising in embryonic season.
Her look was so superbly sweet
that I dropped everything to follow her,
like a miser whose trouble seeking treasure
is made easier by deep delight.
The words “Don’t Touch Me” around her beauteous neck
were written in diamond and topaz.
“My Caesar was pleased to set me free.”
The sun was already halfway through its turn,
my eyes were strained by looking, but not done,
when I fell into the water and she was gone.
— Petrarch
(Rime Sparse 190)
Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
— Sir Thomas Wyatt
______________________________
(Finally, a poem of mine inspired by the notion of a white deer, and its enthralling magnetism to the Unseen and the Real…)
THE WHITE DEER
It’s even closer than our fingertips
what we’re longing for
and travel for in search of
closer than our jugular
Shangri La lies languorously
always out of reach
its silver trays heaped high with
succulence its windows basking in
perennial sunlight
Darkness wraps the dearness of the
depth we fathom but not distance
and the rhythm of it singing in our
eardrums brings it even closer to us
Can’t call it can’t name it
loss is often the way toward it
less is often more in its regard
as we face the chalk snow always
falling across it
And make the face that was ours before birth
come alive in our eyes then our
nose and mouth and the rest
as if clouds were evaporating away from it
leaving it clear
See the white deer standing so close
on the shore bending to drink then
standing still head held high
before leaping away
its reflection in the water writing in
silvery light our most secret name His
answer to our deepest call?
A moon lightens the picture
and where it was a moment ago
fills with light
I can’t explain why the journey takes us
to the place it does
only to find it’s taken us to our
starting place
A ball of concentrated matter
tightens itself to a point
that speeds through space so fast
it goes nowhere is nowhere then is
all and we liken our destiny to its
fall but it doesn’t fall
I can’t explain why that tiny point soon
covers us over all or
why as we age we haven’t gone
anywhere at all
The white deer bounds through the end of space
faster than light can follow her
and comes up in front of us again to drink
our blood’s clear nectar
Sweet as a vapor trail
flicking its deer’s tail
as we also disappear to be more
tangible to ourselves after all
Closer in a mysterious visibility
to our initial caul
