The Drunken Soldier
The drunken soldier broke down the wrong door Inside was a circle of saints lifted off the ground To the sound of gunfire a…
Ramadan suns itself by the dark of night
and takes no notice of
earthquake or flood
Ramadan begins walking toward us from the
furthest hilltop of the previous year
and arrives at our door with
baskets of golden fruit
Although Ramadan seems most at home in
lavish “oriental” settings of jeweled
ewers and plashing fountains
our faces can best be reflected in its
battered tin plates and small sheltered ponds
No one has ever disappeared into Ramadan
never to be seen again
or if they do they appear again at the
Festival in bright silvery clothes
handing out sweets wrapped in our
most personal names
Ramadan is the most patient among us
and endures our anxieties with
perfect poise
never turning its face away
If we knew the treasures of Ramadan we would
want the fast to take place every
day of the year
but the sparkling gold of its coins dissolves into
denominational numbers when
Ramadan ends
If Ramadan were a horse it would be
a herd of the finest thoroughbreds
and each of us would be assigned the one most
suited to our variable temperaments
Ramadan is an ocean that waits each year in a
dimension of space and when it
bursts onto shore it
inundates our souls having transformed our
slightest actions into flying doves
Ramadan ends the way it begins
silently and with the
deepest humility
leaving through the same front door
through which it came
When the Prophet tightens his belt for
Ramadan each of us feels it
some losing and some gaining
the weight of its privations
Love arrives in the disguise of Ramadan
and when it removes its mask we find
it’s been with us all along
as familiar to us as
ourselves
but more than we were before
and less
8/21/11 21 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)
Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Fasting