Monthly Archives: September 2012

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Poem: 31 / What Fire Prevented

This narrative poem was written in hospital during a chemo session, contemplating God’s sending a perceived “calamity” that might be, in fact, heading off a worse one. Gratitude for every state we find ourselves in, in every condition, is the most open-hearted basis of our being, and seeing the possibility that, not “things could be worse” exactly, but that what He’s sent to us in the way of a difficulty could be forestalling or outright subverting something far graver. This poem is the story metaphor of that contemplation…


1

The circus let out early and the
elephant sat in her cage

Clowns removed their white to their natural
pink or brown underneath

The contortionist stretched out for a
lengthy nap

along his entire length
as normal as anyone supine

Josie the tightrope walker walked between the
caravans puffing on her forbidden

cigarette in the slight haze of this
tropical afternoon

The giraffe’s heads towered above the
caravan roofs and the

village children from afar delighted in their
phantasmal shapes

All is well on the circus grounds
and nothing is afoot

No skullduggery or malfeasance no
shady dealings or larcenous absconding

but only a usual afternoon among these
unusual folk for whom a

nice afternoon off though somewhat
rare is a welcome and

calming respite to an otherwise
irregular and certainly offbeat if not

downright
bohemian life

2

When the fire broke out
the lion was asleep

What no one knew was that an
entire angelic order had been

assigned to watch over the circus
because of the child born to the Argentinean

trapeze artists who at
the time were picnicking with their

five children at the
edge of the grounds

the saintly baby in a
basket surrounded by birds

A loud crack as the main
tent pole split in two

a great roaring bellow as the canvas
in the main tent caught fire

smoke billowed above the
circus as if phantom hippopotamus

herds were riding down the sky
though on each billow an

angel rode to keep the
flames from harming a single soul

as everyone awoke or ran in their
panic to the water buckets

always at the ready for such
emergencies

Cries and shouts of the
circus performers and crew

pulling animal wagons away
calling to each other through

chugging billows of
brown smoke

3

The flames resembled leaping lions
jabbing snakes

relentless in their attacks and hot
counterattacks

a vicious darkness where there’d
been ebullient light and

tuba oompahs and flight through hoops

but while Hell seems to have
opened up at this happy circus

what’s fascinating is the
angelic squadrons fanning

out in the unseen to save each soul
suddenly making real the

feats of daring and aerial acrobatics
that outlined by flames now become so

earthbound

Billions of angels came in phalanges and filed in
troops between the fire and all the

people and beasts

They tumbled through belches of smoke
and flew in the rafters’ heights as well as

at the low level of wagon wheels and
floppy clowns

combating sheets of fire with their
angelic ice

lessening its outraged effects
against the innocent joys of

brightly painted matter
suddenly vulnerable to the

disease of burning

for that one precious baby destined to
shine in the eternal worlds as

saint and messenger among us

same as that spot of perfection in our
bodies unscorched by any

outbreak and surrounded by
angelic air invulnerable to its

flames

That sea of light in the
clenched ball of darkness that is

our mortal being
doomed to incinerate in its

brightness

that flying baby in the
wild circus of our being

angelically protected
that leads us into God’s

cool asbestos atmospheres beyond all
conflagration

the leaping sweet roar of it made more
agile than even death’s

deep earthly plodding

4

Josie sat on a coil of
uncharred rope and unburnt pulleys

and noticed how frayed the
rope was in places and how

close it was to breaking

The clowns went through the
unharmed remains of their

dressing room tents and noticed
the old tins of clown white’s ingredients

included traces of poisonous lead

The saved heap of nets the flames missed
showed signs of rot

The trapeze artists with the saintly
child saw their old but unscorched rigging

had been about to shred
as they coughed their way to where they

lay in ropey zigzags across the dirt

But the old main tent was flakes of
ashen canvas

The wooden center rings were black dust

The lion lay asleep on his huge paws

The elephant gazed through slow wise
eyes at his fifth disaster since

Madras

as the circus performers thanked their
God that what He threatened them with

saved them from worse calamities

and another day dawned and the
circus put itself back together

and moved on
______________________________________________
6/10-11/12 (from Down at the Deep End)

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Poem: 45 / All Our Attempts at Healing


“There’s a cure for everything but death”
— Hadith of the Prophet (salla ‘llahu alayhi wa sallam)

All our attempts at
healing are to elude the long

loving arms of death coming
around us

The doorway filling with a sulfurous
light or beneficent radiance

elongating its rays into our hearts
into this little living blip between

two eternities

and somehow from this perspective
all the hustle and bustle of

earth life and its being taken so
seriously becomes

symphonic but strange

We all rush to our appointments
but dread God’s decreed one

on a Venetian canal under moonlight’s
eerie glow and slosh of brackish water

or standing at ease in our usual
nonchalance with

nothing particular to do or think or
say

The mortal bubble we’re
in and that’s in us just such an

evanescence that we naturally
hold back from hearing pop

Our song should twirl around it
the most magnificent of roses

the simplest and most
heartfelt of songs

And may God give me the strength to
believe all this if the

corridor of my own cure becomes
too narrow to

fit down

and only the ocean of love alone
remains left

to wash me clean
________________
6/30/12
(from Down at the Deep End)

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A wali’s passing and poem


(photo:copyright © Peter Sanders)

A couple of days ago a great wali (saint) of the Moroccan desert died, at a very advanced age, I believe well over 100 years old, a faqir of Sayyedina Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib, rahimahu ‘llah, of the Qadiri, Darqawi, Shadhiliyya Habibiyya Tariqah (Sufi Path): Sidi Muhammad Belkorshi of Turug. American Scholar, translator and educator in Marrakech, Abdurrahman Fitzgerald said of him: He was a person already dwelling in Paradise, gazing upon its splendors and endless greenery, even while his poor old body still seemed to be in this world. Al-hamdulillah we were able to meet him and catch a glimpse of his light.

One of the English fuqara (disciples) of our community took a small group of the early Spanish fuqara to Turug to see Sidi Muhammad. They arrived at the desert zawiya and a man came out to take their bags and bring them in out of the heat. He made them comfortable and went to a corner and started making mint tea, the brazier, the teapot, the bushel of fresh mint, the cone of raw sugar, and when it was made poured it into the glasses and brought them to the fuqara and went back and sat in the corner. Some time passed this way, and finally one of the Spanish men said to their guide, “When will we meet Sidi Muhammad?” Their guide pointed to the man in the corner. “That’s him.”

This is the state of the Muslim wali, venerated not for their person, but for their true piety and closeness to Allah ta’ala, the light of their example though they may remain humbly anonymous, active for Allah’s sake alone. He made no claims in all the time of being who he was, yet others saw and respected him for what he would not claim for himself. He served guests, greeted strangers, looked after his community. But many fuqara, and unfortunately I never had an opportunity to be among them, would make the long and difficult journey just to be in his presence, and take away not photos (he rarely allowed anyone to take a photograph of him), but an awed and reverent account of their meeting. He was, it seems, one of the hidden ones. Hidden in plain sight. May Allah ta’ala be pleased with him in the highest of Firdaus. And may we one day be in the like of his company again.

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WITH THE SAINT AT THE WINDOW

The saint sat at the window and
became the window
that’s what saints do

And the saint went out the window
and became the air
that’s how they are

Animals feeding on the mountainside
saw the saint pass
they’ve got the eyes for it

The mountainside felt the saint pass
and her grasses bent aside
that’s how saints go

On a saint’s errand all things in place
for the remedy to arrive
on time as always

The twelve ducklings and the Chinese child
felt instantly renewed
though the saint barely touched them

Back before supper the saint wasn’t missed
the place settings glimmered
as usual

Our earth is in need of them
our hearts are in need of them
God keep them at our side
_______________________________
(from Coattails of the Saint, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2006)