Monthly Archives: March 2007
Video: Sparrow on the Prophet’s Tomb (peace be upon him)
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Commentary on DeenPort Haiku
The war’s fourth birthday…
Congratulations? ka-boom!
(all predicitions true)…
While some celebrate, others mourn, and others die – many, many others. My incomprehension soars that anyone could continue to support this war except for covert reasons that never seem to get articulated. Iraqi and American lives have been massively and tragically disrupted, the middle-class intelligentsia of Baghdad have fled and are trying to flee to neighboring countries, never mind the country that invaded them and created the chaos in the first place (only 400 plus immigrations allowed into the United States in four years. That’s 100 per year!… has America lost its conscience completely?).
So what is this war we are trying to win, and what constitutes the much vaunted victory? I see, from my naïve perspective, three goals: Oil control, Israel protection, Permanent bases. Securing the first two should be obvious, though I think that ironically our involvement may actually jeopardize Israel more than help it in the long run… But as we speak, and as villages and large parts of Iraq are struggling just to eat, get hospital care, leave the house and return in one piece, out in acres of Iraqi land America has built huge cities behind great barricades (we never see the photos) with movie theaters, bars selling alcohol (in a Muslim country!), prostitution, and electricity, water and perfect efficiency, all the things to keep soldiers well-fed and happy, since tomorrow they may die… And we talk about keeping these mini-metropolises permanently! Is this why Bush is holding on like Odysseus lashed to the mast of his boat, until the last concrete barrier is in place and we can say, definitively, that we’re here to stay and we’re never going to leave… and to hell with everyone else! “The New Middle East?”
It’s too easy to say this is a Crusade, though the religious component in Bush’s mind cannot be dismissed completely. But he’s a crude Christian to wreak such havoc on others with so little real concern (by his actions in spite of his occasional furrowed brow). It’s a total embarrassment all around… and it seems only tepid resistance by any in positions of influence. And the weasel that rolls around in the water breaking shells on its stomach is that all of this was predicted by veterans of the 60s and modern experts in think tanks and in the field, that a precipitous and unprepared invasion would bring about exactly the results we see today. Not abstractly, but exactly!
My wife and I, in our mid-60s, reminiscent of the mid-60s in America, marched with the global millions against this war at the beginning of it, to which Bush later responded saying that he doesn’t listen to “focus groups.” Now we see that he doesn’t listen to the American public, the Congress or the Constitution of the United States either, and that he “doesn’t care,” he is above such concerns. He has said that he listens to a “higher power,” but I think we should check more carefully where this voice he listens to is coming from… like, say, from under the floorboards, with the lick of flames and the smell of sulfur seeping through…
In all of this we must remember that only Allah has power…hard as it may sometimes be to see. Even Iblis is on His leash. I actually find it hard to bring myself to say this, given the horrors abounding. To try to see a positive outcome of such overwhelming tragedy and extensive Diaspora stops me, though time will certainly tell. But this is always the case, and those in the actual midst of it know it far more acutely than I. May they be comforted by His Mercy and the radiant Light of His Face.
Poem for his Mawlid, peace be upon him
MUHAMMAD’S BIRTH
About his birth the whole world knows
in the depths of its atoms.
Amina bore him and he was immediate
in his praise of Allah.
Some say he first did sajda, others
that he spoke the shahada
and then was silent.
Already at birth he was the Prophet of Unity, the
movie played backwards
from its glorious end.
His father Abdallah, from the tribe of Hashim,
died without seeing him.
The wet nurse Halima took him to her heart
and their goat’s milk flowed.
All the desert burst into sumptuous flower
from his singular presence.
The nighttime covered him
with its spangled blanket.
The day fluffed the wool of its sides for him to
tend it like huddled sheep.
A cloud went with him to shade him from the heat
at the desert saint’s surprise banquet.
(He could see the Prophet’s space among the
caravan leaders and
called out for him to fill it –
“Where is the boy who has come, by Allah,
to show me the Prophet’s seal?” – a mole
it is said, between his shoulder blades, with
circling hairs like a horse’s mane.)
He grew up trustworthy among men for whom
this was a difficult quality.
He took from the cloth of Unity
the Black Stone of Eternity
and placed it bodily
in the side of God’s House,
cornerstone finality,
stone we kiss
out of awe of God’s Majesty!
1984 (from Maulood)
Poem: in a lighter vein…?
FIRST THE KNEES GIVE OUT
First the knees give out then the
ship’s rudder then the bank account then the canary cage
then Uncle Henry’s moustache then the tablecloth begins to
fray the chair falls apart doors fall off their hinges the
cows start speaking in tongues the
eyes blur our food turns back to its
origins in the earth or on the hoof
the sky itself begins to look old as it has
never before usually perennially adolescent or even
in its eternal baby-blue infancy
trees begin to produce purses full of play money
hills begin to growl like overheated engines as they
start their climb
everyone else looks positively glamorous in black and
white or color
and so it goes as time goes by
waving one moment from a quick window
or being the one waved to
as everything actually revolves around
time’s immovable pivot
water falling backwards into the awed mouth of the
river from which it flowed
8/11/2002 (from Through Rose-Colored Glasses)
New Poem: Clarifying Vision
CLARIFYING VISION
An alchemist looks at his laboratory and sees
penguins drinking tea
He looks again and sees it’s his beakers bubbling
A king looks out at his courtiers and sees them
hurling stones
He looks again and sees it’s their tongues moving
An aerialist looks down and sees empty space
sliced in two
He looks again and sees it’s his tightrope quivering
If we look out on the world we might see its
bison heaving together in steaming herds
heading perilously near sheer cliffs
But if we look again it may be a summer
fireworks seen in the distance over picnickers
or the soft chiming of bells played solemnly by enrobed
eighth graders raising and lowering their brassy glints
The plot thickens and thins congeals and bubbles up
and then when it seems to get its thorniest and knottiest
dissipates into vapor and we see that the gummy substance of it
was simply its lovely symmetry or the way two abstract
planes of it intersected then pulled away into thin air
I look at this page and I’m at Alamogordo
watching an A-bomb test shielding my eyes as the
universe showers up into nothingness
Gaze at the walls and see giraffes in wallpaper droves
galloping from right to left in a continuous
scissoring screen loping tall yellow against blue sky
See the hearts of us all like precious orchids in jars
at an exhibition tended by a hooded figure
enveloped in halo calling each of our
names by their secret Arabic meanings
under a hushed heaven
And it’s the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him
moving among us
soothing our bruises and strengthening the
delicate but stalwart nature of our stems
Who sees only God
3/17/2007 (from Invention of the Wheel)
Poem: The Fact of the Matter
THE FACT OF THE MATTER
The fact of the matter is that there’s
no fact and no matter
Waves of light across corrugated panes of space
each scallop of which cups rainbows and
other dazzling prismatic distractions
such as wars poverty venality office furniture
romance gone sour romance rekindled
all the various snake-holes and zigzag
courses we travel to go from A to B
never forgetting if we’re lucky the purpose of this
extended quest for the meaningful glance of
each moment of it that tells us
who we are as crystal facets which by their
reflective luster show us our ephemerality
and His Absolute Light
Mountains of cities have come before us
and mountains of cities will come after us
each somehow operating under the delusion of
self-propulsion and each to each contributing
to that mutual shadow-show
When giant bridges in the Unseen are constantly
swinging into place
and depositing us where we need to be
in a lovely dome covered with flowers
in gardens of various winding ways
though what we may see with our sensual eyes is
obstructive girders and iron walls and even the
starry placards of open space itself
Heartbeat by heartbeat proclaim to us our
limitations and our escape
But no step without its echo preceding it
leads us in no direction that as it
takes place in real time has not been
pre-ordained
taking me to you and you to the
roaring lion-filled jungles of night
where a certain dance takes place among
atoms in their combinations and re-
combinations that looks like the fact and matter of
this world but is really a screen for the
next
Oh glorious ones in our vulnerable pulses
each life on earth as precious as
Paradise
each one a torch for another
and the doorway wide enough for all!
3/13/2007 (from Invention of the Wheel)
New Poem: Clocks Set Ahead
CLOCKS SET AHEAD
Clocks set ahead one hour
but darkness is just as dark
Darkness after all is timeless
Darkness doesn’t polish its shoes
Whoever’s left in the darkness
stands ghostly in the mist
Shades and shadows blend together
One voice cracks the darkness
Every darkness has some light in it
Every light some dark
The eye alone sees timelessly
light and dark as God enters it
Then the dome of the sky slides off
and we see worlds we hadn’t seen before
Hidden behind dazzling nets of stars
or circulating in the dark between them
From a darkness that’s not dark we come
To a darkness that’s not dark we go
Everything’s wrapped in the arms of darkness
the loving arms of the deep darkness
Even as the clock’s set an hour forward
and the sun comes up an hour late
Creatures know what time it is
So far the birds are quiet
The trees await the orders of the day
to continue their silent vigils
3/11/07 (from Invention of the Wheel)
Ghazal: At Rumi’s Tomb
IN RUMI’S TOMB IN KONYA
A sky shaped like a face – no it can’t be that
A wingéd horse on fire in the middle of the air – no it can’t be that
A sound of bells that burns from the feet to the heart
A whisper of hidden words falling from the top of a tree – no it can’t be that
A look across centuries that today is enshrouded in the world
The touch of a child’s hand who already knows the secret – no it can’t be that
A bridge of light in all the usual places
A bird that expands to embrace every living heart – no it can’t be that
An eye that beholds the cave where the Prophet became Messenger
A sing-song voice speaking perfect rhyming sentences – no it can’t be that
Hello before you arrive and Hello again before you get up to go
A kiss across green water that reflects both sun and moon – no it can’t be that
A call from within Rumi’s shirt so old its threads look like rain
A light that slides up a corner of the tomb and fills the body – no it can’t be that
What is it then? Is there any answer?
Is it possible to say? – no it can’t be that
Ameen was gone for a moment but something remained
There’s only a trace left in the air from all of us – no it can’t be that
Mevlana – we certainly had a magnificent celebration
Does it need to end? – no – please – it can’t be that
5/7/2002 (from The Flame of Transformation Turns to Light / 99 Ghazals Written in English)
(written at Rumi’s tekke in Konya)
from Becoming the Mountain / Poem
Never underestimate the power of
impossible desire
Flight would never have occurred to us nor
loss of lesser self with God’s encompassing
Presence and ultimate All-pervasiveness
in every domain of our being
Saying what was unknown to us before
on prophetic tongues out of our usual human shallows
turning the tragic momentariness of our life
into a cup of delicious and deliriously
tasted expansion the wine of His illumination and
the drink that slakes all thirsts in a
single swallow by His Grace
the heart’s tongue becoming suddenly capable of
choirs
6/6/2006 (from In the Realm of Neither)
