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 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)
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
(Note: This poem was commissioned by Abdal-Hakim Murad for his essay appearing in the compendious volume, Mary, the Complete Resource, edited by Sarah Jane Boss and published in 2007. I don’t usually work this way, but it was a powerful adventure for me, with a rather miraculous dénoument described in the note at the end. The poem appears here in its entirety, having been edited for the book, with section 5 missing. I’ve kept the description of Artemis [Google Artemis of Ephesus for images] with multiple breasts, although there is now some controversy over whether or not that is what they are.)
for Abdal-Hakim Murad
1
The Virgin Mary sat on a rock that was not wholly rock
in a world that was not wholly world
in a light that was Light direct
in the echo of a Command that came from God direct
whose womb was now to house a halo more than she could
possibly long for
and which made her fear
and caused her angel messenger to comfort her
as he stood at the door and mentioned how
God had designated her the hallowed hall for His pure breath to enter
to make a child with no seed but Himself
to show mankind His holy fatherhood over all
within the physical
but without physical union
2
The pen is hardly lifted
The penalty for birth is death
But he who would be born without coitus
would slide out of death without its mortal coil
Would be taken up to God without entering death’s womb
as he had entered Mary’s womb without birth’s usual folderol
She clutched a tree to steady herself
and dates fell to the ground around her
And he spoke to her from herself
to steady her
Rings of tumult sang around her
The Garden’s tree was now there to strengthen her
her nearing it part of God’s ordained structure
to redeem Adam and Eve’s descent to earth
by new prophecy through standing under
the virgin birth-tree’s sacred agency
Adam of no visible parents
Eve of no mother but father Adam’s rib-side
being both mother and father
now terrestrialized again in Mary’s husbandless pregnancy
though all of us are actually children
of much more than our mere mother’s earthly sympathy
3
I saw Mary board a bus at Broad and State
her head covered and her face radiant
small and held within herself
careful and preoccupied
a heaven seeming to be wrapped around her
her cheeks red her lips dry her eyes lowered
interior moisture her preferred cloister
the bus passengers sudden ghosts before her
her shoes small and tattered
her hands carrying a book
If any had spoken to her she might have become lost
If she had spoken to anyone
they might have become saved
4
None can be “Mother of God” but God
nor Creator of us but God Himself
Jesus begat in light sat in light and was transformed into light
beyond light’s shapes of dark and light
his salutation from where he is continues to excite us
just as Mary’s humility brings us home
to where impossible things are true
and true things impossible or possible by our own lights
to submit as purely to God’s sheer command of: Be!
more than enough to be
in Being’s age-long mystery
5
In Ephasis is Artemis
with multitudes of breasts
and legend says where Mary went
and where she died and rests
Teets our forms are fed from
virgin light that salves our souls
the two eternal females
through whom our life unrolls
The Virgin ever virginal
in modesty extreme
and Artemis whose many breasts
supply an endless stream
One statue standing among rocks
the other in her cave
whose house of stone is all alone
within the Light we crave
____________________________
NOTE
Walking in the woods as is my wont in the morning
June 9th 2005 Philadelphia Pennsylvania after strong storms and
all the trees dry now creaking in the heat and humidity
thinking of this poem
thinking of Mary peace be upon her
walking along the trail wondering to myself about the
Sufi Tariqa of the Mariamiyya
I suddenly hear a crack like horrendous thunder seemingly from
far away but look up above me in time to see a
huge bough break from the top of a tall tree with a giant screech and
hurtle down toward me at seemingly supersonic speed
I step aside yelling “Allah!” automatically heart thumping
and the heavy branch crash-lands exactly where I
stood a split second before and breaks into four or five
raw pieces cracked and shattered and me shocked and grateful
thanking Allah over and over thanking Him with all my being
my position just under it one split second before happily
not there for it to
crash onto me now safe and sound at the side of the trail
I wonder at the force of it as I continue now to wonder
Allah’s full and Awful Power exposed to me direct from the
core of the universe as if sky and earth and mortality itself were
opened up in the blink of an eye
and my life actually only a literal hair’s breadth away
from death
At the Thursday night Sufi meeting I describe it in detail
to Baji our Pakistani shaykha and first thing she asks is “What were you thinking just before the bough broke and fell?” and when I tell her I was thinking of the Virgin Mary
she says without a moment’s pause “Just as Allah protected and saved Mariam
so Mariam protected you and saved you!”
_____________________________________________
6/7-6/9/2005 (from Holiday from the Perfect Crime, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2011, first published in a different version in Mary, the Complete Resource, Compendium Books, 2007)
(Note: Just back from neck surgery, to zip out the last remnant of lymphatic cancer cells if they lurked, and we prayed, the surgeons and me, before — and the head surgeon, well beloved and an expert, reported to my wife, Malika, that “it certainly seemed to make the surgery go better,” and so hopefully successful. His assistant reported that he teased the little mass from near the jugular so deftly the vein wasn’t harmed, nor any nerves. Now back at work, editing a collection of poems from 1994-95, A Hundred Little 3D Pictures, a jubilant one from that work:)
Everyone walks around with
faces of lovers of God, everyone,
young, old, grumpy, delighted, enraged,
empurpled with
rage, reddened with violent temper, drink,
despair, eyes like acetylene, blowtorch tongue and
nozzle nose, forehead like
perpetual landslide, no,
absolutely everyone,
cherubic and winsome, eyes bright as
flying saucers over sunlit skies in Chicago,
hands delicately rubbing fuzzy cheeks,
everyone walks around with faces of
God-intoxicated
creatures who know the true source of all
pain and pleasure,
each blood vessel a periscope gazing across the
sea of God’s bliss,
each vein a tributary from the swollen river of
God’s Glory, all these
beloved faces, going along their way, so
preoccupied, whisking past without
eye contact, mouths quiet but invisibly
engaged in continuous dialog,
but look! Out of the womb, those fresh
faces of new fruit, eyes clenched, puckered
cheeks and chins, how they
slowly flatten out like sheets of
foolscap for writing on, and they
do get written on,
by quill pens a mile long held by
angels who scribble and scribble on our
faces day and night, awake and asleep,
eye-twinkles, mouth-wriggles, nose
twitches, furrowing of
brow, harrowing of
gaze, then the
sudden relaxation as of giant
mammals broken free from sea depths, suddenly
exultant in earthly sunlight,
faces of love or forlorn expectation, darkened with
drugs or despair, a great
cloud passed over, rain pelting
down on drawn eyelids,
my own face this morning so hopeless,
feeling the set of mouth and
deadening of eyes — but we’re in
God’s aquarium, we’re
measured from His element, our
faces are puzzle-pieces in the
entire world-picture of His
love. And each
facial gesture shows it, each
exchange of facial message
to God.
Out of our faces great doves explode,
great stretches of grass and flamingos,
great pampas of the
mastodons, and out of our
glorious faces banners of light unfold, rippling
through night sky, making their
own aurora borealis for us
to see by, light shaking multi-colored curtains of light,
and out of every face on earth come
flares and water spray and volcanic eruptions
of purest essentialness,
moods of mist and enlightenment of
dusty texts tucked away in Syrian libraries,
tiny exchanges of wisdom so
minute even gnats feel comfortable circling around
in their light,
so vast no bald eagle ever gets tired wheeling
endlessly in their sky.
_________________________________________________
|3/11/95 (from A Hundred Little 3D Pictures, being edited for publication, insha’Allah)
(Note: In 2003 this poem was written for all the dead children from our recent [and present] wars, for those children lost in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon… But today we have just lost [and continue to lose] young innocent lives in a fit of madness again revealing the devastating psychic cracks in our society, be it from incessant crime shows, irrational gun romance, romanticized gangster rap… And these are just the tips of the icebergs…
So now this poem is for the lost children (and adults) of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and all their loved ones, here and everywhere…
______________________________________________
Angels are learning new tricks to entertain all the
dead children
just bringing them to a quiet place used to be enough
blue panels sonorous as cool winds rising to
infinite heights and
luminous rivers tasting of fresh milk and
passionflower honey
But now they are more restless and want something
lively such as fabulous displays and real
stellar extravaganzas to shut out the memories
All the wingéd horses have been brought in
and every banner from every battle ever waged
transformed into aurora borealis brightness is
planted on either side of the great arena which is
actually nowhere you can put your finger on and may be as
big as a sparkle or light years across
The angels begin conventionally enough and since they’re
anti-gravitational they are capable of some
pretty amazing feats their specialty being a
spinning array of a few billion shimmering their wings and
turning slowly at first in a
cone that goes up through so many dimensions the
children have to stop counting with
each dimension demarcated by another
color no one on earth’s spectrum has
ever seen before
Then the cone begins
turning faster and faster and shoots higher and higher
finally sweeping their astonished souls wide-eyed into a
vortex so swift they barely notice that they’re
arcing across fields of unearthly green and seas of
unoceanic turquoise
Each shroud has been made into a tent filled with
fabulous fruits and unidentifiable edibles of
uttermost succulence
Each soul has been given the Ultimate Glimpse
and the Accurate Portrayal
the Perfect Sustenance and the Infinite Intensity
Each time they clap their hands a new
universe appears
more fabulous than the last
And when they tire of such delights
William Blake reads to them from his new work
and Mozart comes in and plays them a tune
on a million pianos
_________________________________________________________________
4/11/2003 (from Psalms for the Brokenhearted, Ecstatic Exchange, 2006)
Just back from seeing The Life of Pi, in 3D, overwhelmed by it, and for me a truly cathartic experience. In it we are face to face with, well, in a metaphorical sense, in not overly rigorous tashbih perhaps, God.
A tiger. Blake’s Tyger. Face so profoundly symmetrical, masked and marked, brute and beautiful, snarling and truly dangerous, serenely transcendent, insouciantly in charge, divine beast, vicegerent of the most fearful Names, and all-powerful leashed and unleashed. Glorious.
Near the end, the boy hero looks up and thanks God (not the tiger) for bringing him with the live tiger on the little white lifeboat in the vast ocean, to keep him awake, aware, one-pointed. In focus. And for me, having undergone a summer this year of cancer treatment, every day asking God’s help with the most sincerity I’ve ever had, and the most focus, there was a deep poignancy of that facing-off, that face to face and ever-present encounter, and the film actually opened some locked floodgate of emotion in me when storm and ocean and tiger were over, and in cathartic release, let it out.
We are so brave, we have such faith, yes, but there is a buildup of, not fear really, but encountering the fearsomeness of existence and death, that impinges on us when we’re truly fighting for survival through a sickness, or whatever tribulation. As the boy was on the open sea, tiger constantly before him.
I had watched a short video of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in the afternoon, on Dunya, this-world concerns. And in it he was saying that dunya is set up to bring us tribulations, a state in which we are closest to God, usually closer than when all’s going well, and that we look to their transformation into ease, as the Companions did, blessings on them all, who endured tribulations in their lives rather than in the practice of their Way, which has a profounder anchor and an unwobbling pivot. For with difficulty is ease. Is ease.
And then in the evening, Life of Pi. Whew. And both, as Shaykh Hamza presented it also, have a happy ending. That we all look forward to a happy ending, and pray and hope for it. And then the film reminded me of a poem from my book, Salt Prayers, poems written in 1998, inspired from another film, Passion in the Desert, where the beast is a leopard, that in turn reminded me of a quote I’d read long ago from Al-Ghazali, raheemullah, whose gist was that if a real lion is at our throats it is no longer a metaphor for God. It is God. The Doer in all doings.
At this moment Life of Pi is up there with Himalaya and Babette’s Feast as the greatest spiritual films I’ve ever seen. They advance you on the Path.
Here’s the poem:
I’M IN LOVE WITH A PANTHER
1
I’m in love with a panther. I’m in
love with her claws, with her
savage breath and those teeth on the
cutting edge of danger. I’m in
love with her eyes which see in a way I
can’t know, not with
human seeing, green-gray, they
flash in the night, spotlit, as if the
light comes from deep inside her and is
laser beamed through her pupils outward. I
love her sleekness. She can be ahead of me in
a pounce, her back flanks rippling with
sheer power. Terror
in the air as she leaps forward. I love that she’s
distant from me in nature, I’m bound by her
strength over me, she could
kill me in a wink and
probably will, most certainly will, when I
least expect it, from the side, or from in
front, with sweet and
ample preparation, closing in on me gradually,
I love that, I love her darkness, sheen of
burnished velvet, she is erotically
charged but far beyond such
passing passions, she
flattens next to me and flicks her ears. She’s picking up
faraway sounds. No sound
escapes her. I love the
shadow she pulls close across me, starting from my
toes and moving upward to my
scalp with hair standing on end.
She looks me full in the eyes, but when I
gaze into those eyes like
freefalling on a night of
absolute blackness, falling deep
into them, it’s nothing
familiar, nothing I can easily translate, it’s
cuneiform hieroglyphics and the
calligraphy of an enticing death, that we
both get wrapped in a black fur cloak and that we
lose our distinct identities, and when the
smoke clears we’re at ease among her
rocks at her accustomed height, just
above the tree line, noses
pressed against a sky so pristine white
it’s like the inside of shell.
2
Her teasing only makes me ask for more.
Reality goes way past metaphor.
She takes me to the edge and I look down.
She crouches forward, face impassive, yawns.
Miles down the rock face is her element.
She’s part of shale and schist, rock, cement.
As easily down an office building’s slope
I look down with my panther at my side, hopeless
as well as full of hope. Black thing. Gorgeous
as death is. Through valley gorges,
peaks, stealthily as well as obviously she goes.
Her blackness starkly silhouetted when it snows.
I’m dandled, played with, left alone, surrounded.
Everywhere I go I’m panther-bounded.
Her purr’s a sound like no sound ever sounded.
Her growl like gurgling tree roots, primordial groan.
With her I’m never lonely, yet alone.
Her roar puts out the night, lights up the moon.
3
My panther who blends into the night
and is gone. Present but
not plainly visible.
Her formlessness spreads out across the sky at dawn.
___________________________________________________
6/24/98 (from Salt Prayers, The Ecstatic Exchange, 2005)
(Note: This poem from my “Treatment” series, in honor of the ‘Eid al-Kabir, celebrated soon all over the world, and the salat-an-Nabi billion-believer recitation after Maghreb Prayer on Sunday, November 4, insha’Allah, and personally, it seems, the emergence from cancer treatment with the tumor foreclosed, alhamdulillah. May all those suffering illness also feel the Prophet’s (salla ‘llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) sweet hand of balm on body and soul. The accompanying drawing is from a series of over thirty done during the depths of chemo and radiation treatment, a selection of which will be published in black and white in the forthcoming book of Down at the Deep End poems.)
(salla ‘llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is assumed after the mention of his blessed name)
The Prophet Muhammad sits by the
bedside of the sick
Stands in our doorways to
shield us from the light
Strolls with us through our
dark woods
Is there in the clouds when we
fly in the air
and meets us when we
land at our differing destinations
Each one of us at once
his most precious concern
Messenger of God
not for a moment leaving us
comfortless
Feel his breath as he
bends over us
complete and deep assured
His full attention on the
condition of our souls
to pluck us from every
purgatorial indifference
peace and blessings of
Allah be upon him
greater than the sum
of each of our allotted breaths
and his Companions and Family
to the Next World
most true
________________________________________________________
6/28/12 (from Down at the Deep End, soon to be published
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)
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.
__________________________________
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)
Cancer greedily drinks at the oasis meant for
healthy beasts and weary travelers
Cancer’s dark generosity knows no bounds
Cancer is that thing that once planted
can’t easily be got rid of except through
foreclosure or death
Cancer rides death’s black horse
but should be walking beside it
When cancer appears everything changes
as if death were drawing nearer
when it’s God drawing nearer
Cancer is a sown field full of
tares and rocks trying to
flourish at the farmer’s expense
Somehow there’s no sky above cancer
but only the closeness of a closed room
and a small expandable exit
that could become the sky
Cancer thinks its attitude is
our attitude but it
won’t get away with it
Cancer is a man in a blue blazer
waiting at the corner for a
man in a black trench coat but
when they meet the man in blue will
blaze and open up into a
night full of stars
Cancer clings like a monkey
sings like a drunken sailor
rings like a giant bronze bell
in the Pure Land of the Buddha
Cancer is the clearest indicator of
Who is in charge
that He might wipe it away
little by little
Alhamdulillah, God be praised, that during this blessed month of Ramadan (and ‘Eid Mubarak!), I’ve completed my treatment and spent the time, while most Muslims have been not eating, trying and sometimes forcing myself to eat! The two weeks after the end of chemo and radiation seem to have been the hardest (I was clobbered), but on my birthday, July 30th, Allah presented me with an opening to think that I’d actually feel better, and I was able to swallow and take some enjoyment in food, losing about forty pounds in the meantime. After a kind of general numbness, I’ve begun transcribing some of the poems written during treatment, and will begin posting them again, insha’Allah. Thank you for your good thoughts and prayers.
Here’s the first:
SOUL QUESTIONS
Do the soul’s arms hang
down at its sides?
Do the soul’s legs
extend down from its hips?
Do the soul’s eyes
float above sea level?
Do they see to the ends of
creation and scan the great
globe of its ethereal atmospheres?
Does the soul’s nourishment
enter the mouth and circulate
among its delicious caverns?
Are the soul’s lengths and
breadths and widths the
whole sky’s peak and oceans’
mysteries?
Are the creatures of the soul as
familiar with us as
we are with ourselves?
Do the cries of the soul
reverberate inside God’s Throne
and come back merciful music?
Does the rain of the soul
wet grasses and delicate
tips of cypress trees?
Is the soul in the shadow of a
doorway and
sunlight along a fence?
Eyes of the soul meet
eyes of the one soul
and do they fill with
tears of recognition and
uttermost familiarity?
Does the soul go
out across expanse
and continue in endlessness?
Does the soul’s heart beat with the
same heartbeat our
bodies have harbored since before we were
born?
Or is the soul’s heartbeat now
God’s heartbeat
that is no heartbeat we can know?
Will we see the wasteland below us
and the Glad Land before us?
Is air the skin of the soul
and Light its soul
recalling it back to itself
to send out its pulse
where we have never
gone before?
Eyes open wide
the soul’s deep inner abode
its alive abiding?
_________________
6/9 (from Down at the Deep End)
