Monthly Archives: November 2009

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Poem: Prayer at the Ka’ba


Oh Lord, the orange cat lying asleep on the
shoe rack outside the Ka’ba
looked tranquil, lean from
living wild in Mecca, but still
cat-like and sweet-faced –
surely some of this peacefulness
could come to me?

Oh Lord, You raise up giant roof-beams in the
world and
hurl great foundations
as deep as the seas –
I am only your creation of
flesh and bone,
but surely some of those
depths and heights
could be mine?

Oh Allah, I sit here facing Your House on
earth, beseeching Your Grace,
seeking Your Face,
my own not good enough in
this life,
my own face a combination of
lusty panther and
awkward ostrich
in this life,
yet I’m grateful for its
miraculous properties in
facing the world,

especially the eyes – close them
and light spreads,
open them and
miracles appear –
especially Your stark square of black cloth rising
endlessly up into the night in front of me now
but Your Face, Lord,
could I catch a
glimpse of it at least?

A white owl flies in the night somewhere,
its impassive face and saucer eyes
fleeing through the air.

Is this my face, Lord,

searching everywhere?
_______________________________
12/20/95 (from Sparrow on the Prophet’s Tomb)

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Poem: The Morning of the Last Day

THE MORNING OF THE LAST DAY

Allah elects from whomever he wants of His slaves
for the presence of isolation
— Shaykh ibn al-Habib of Fez

The sun is rising and the sky is lightening from
deep black to fluffy blue and gray
with shadows and tinges of white,
revealing the marble minarets like
giant chess pieces against the sky,
the mosque’s arches within arches lit by a golden
glow around the edges
and the invincible House of Allah at the center
covered with its cloth of endless
night out of which the
Word of God emerges constantly in filigreed
gold lettering around the circumference,
the round circumference of the
square House of Allah
under a sky that brightens as I write
and is now a light blue with a puzzle of
gray clouds moving slowly across it.

I am seated in the first row of carpets
in front of the Ka’ba.
Behind me to my left there is a discourse in Arabic
to unseen listeners.
To my right someone is reciting Qur’an, and
two men with deep voices are engaged in
earnest conversation. An
African in pure white robe and

turban to my immediate left silently
studies the Holy Book.
People pass and people sit, men and
women learning each minute the
arduous delights of submission.

The sound in the distance now of a
marble-polishing machine, a
steady whirr as the
circular brush buffs places so many
thousands of human feet press,

and I am devastated and alone,
my heart a tub of molten lead
about to pour into space.
I am lost with nowhere to go,
childless, friendless, bereft,
a fool, constantly
imbibing my own foolishness rather than the
sweet deep spring of Allah –

I’ve hit zero.

The sky turned gray while I said this,
the electric lights will soon go out,
two swallows cross the gray sky,
an old beardless man in long black cape
walks past from left to right –
is he also devastated and alone? Is he also
childless, friendless? He smiles as he
passes, accompanied by a
younger man. Another soul

lost in the cosmos? Another adrift on God’s

surf?

There’s no time left for fancy thoughts.

The Ka’ba faces us with its
implacable face.

We face Allah with our
original face.
__________________________
1/1/96 (from Sparrow on the Prophet’s Tomb)

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Poem: The Wild Stars

STARRY HEAVENS
Every person on earth
walks their entire life back and forth
underneath the stars, but it seems as if
some never look up.

Babies crane their necks when they notice for the
first time the
ceiling’s been replaced by
sprinkling lights of heavens, hot white pinpoints
beaming down through the sieve of
dark in titillating dots. Things with

wings of various
sizes and velocities pass
by under its
concave canopy. Lions pounce on gazelles and
quietly gnaw fresh flesh by moonlight under
the fierce intensity of the night sky.

Hut-smoke curls gray snakes of fuzziness in
tiny wriggling threads up into the sparkling blanket of
the sky as it
curves entirely
around the globe.

A speck of three-masted boat in the moonlit sheen of open sea
has within it, the size of
microbes, intelligent mites looking out through
telescopes and calculating with
astrolabes in order to reach
shore on schedule. The stars, the

silent stars are their counselors.

A bead of water on marble, imperfectly
round, heavier at the
bottom, actually reflects
all the visible heavens and all the visible
stars on the
surface of its sides without any
visible effort, even
catching their progress from
horizon to
horizon before
evaporating un-immortally away.

On the blackened circular
surface of the
coffee in your coffee cup many of the
same stars are
mirrored. You drink their
light with your last
satisfied gulp.

Why do you hide the stars inside you?
The wild stars.

Why do you turn down their light?
_______________________________________________
12/9/89
(from A Maddening Disregard for the Passage of Time)