Poems of the Journey: Absent Beloved

I cannot describe or present this latest poem of the journey, the sigh of a fractured, if loving soul, which only utter Beauty and utter helplessness might explain.

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Poems of the Journey: Absent Beloved


Absent Beloved

You see me immobile, straining to step into your court, unable even to fix my gaze upon your winged feet.

I fail utterly to rest upon invisibility, even when the visible has lost its power of conviction over my soul. Incapable to lure any longer my dreams, my hopes and expectations, it is still able to persuade, for moments upon accumulating moments, my full attention, the transient motions of my being, when all round me solidity presses its suit and promises in its all-surrounding embrace momentary escape from your absence's burning pain.

Desire overwhelms me, and all but undoes me. I can no longer tell what atom of this yearning is not you, for in your absence every shadow takes on your silhouette and torments my waking dreams. I call to you, with every tear and every smile (I can no longer tell them apart) while hope, exhausted, falters, and thirst images all round me a thousand empty mirages, which I readily discern as insubstantial, yet my unheeding, thirst-consumed limbs pursue in overwhelming need of respite, my will only at the very last imposing itself over this pointless career toward the emptiness of you, leaving my spirit not unscathed.

There is no part of me that has not sought you, no prayer left unsaid, no supplication unuttered, no tear unshed. There is no doctor, earthly or heavenly, to whom I have not turned to help me bear your absence, else draw it to a close. I have travelled the earth and joined every company, and also closed my eyes and sought you alone and quietly in the privacy of my habitation. I have sung to you songs of love where the wise gravely discourse; wept for you until more tears were impossible, yet keep on falling. I have kindled one hundred hearts in joy at your evocation - wounded hundreds more with the consequences of my majnun-like search of you.

I have sought you, beloved, from my youth, with all my innocence and vigour, and have aged prematurely upon reaching your door, and receiving your invitation, and hearing your most sweet voice, and smelling your exquisite perfume, and feeling your touch upon my skin - and discovering myself unable to respond, to step into your open chamber, cross your threshold, and join you, my love, my goal, my genesis, my all.

I know not what else to do, where else to go. You alone know the extent of my efforts. Only you can plumb the depths of my disappointment, the measure of my failure, the scale of my self-defeat, the accumulated grains of loneliness that add up to this desert of longing.

And yet, goal of my heart, perhaps your greatest miracle in me is that I am still far, very far from losing hope. Your tender, flashing eyes, even in the distance, even behind the luminous veil that hides your face, speak intimately to my heart such ravishing beauty and compassion, that I know, I know however far I seem destined to remain, yet you are nearer. I do not understand this statement of mine which my throbbing heart beats when I lift my gaze to yours. But what is the logic of words where beauty reigns?

Beloved one. You know my heart. You know my desperate, if not despairing need, and the exact limits of my strength.

Do not abandon me.

I know my undeserving. You know my sincerity, all there is of it.

I do not ask relief, best beloved - my tears and searing sighs are your kisses upon my neck - but only faithfulness. The strength to come to rest without distraction in your invisibility, rest fully, joyfully and undeviatingly, else be granted in my weakness a visible path to rest in you.

You know what is in me. I know only my desire to be yours without remnant or delay, and be granted the insight and ability to court you in deeds that destroy in triumphant celebration the lukewarm traces of mediocrity in love.

Whatever I am, I am yours. All else is my love for your mirrored image upon creation's troubled waters, and my unwise and self-destroying impatience with your absence. Even my failures in your path are signals of your conquest. Like Jami's Zuleika, if I slit my own hands while preparing the banquet, it is only because you just stepped into the room, and I lost my concentration.

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Poems of the Journey: Preamble to a Wish

Here is another "poem of the journey", as I have chosen to refer to these burning sighs. This one is the fruit of my reflections on the preamble to the Long Obligatory Prayer, which in truth may be an entire journey, in itself, into the heart of obligatory prayer, and a gateway to sincerity. May we be confirmed in our quest for authenticity at the moment, that unique, atemporal moment, that kairos, of true prayer.



PREAMBLE TO A WISH



“Whoso wisheth...”


Whose own wishes

spread like canvas

for His hand to trace

its wishes on?


Who

so wishes

so longs

so yearns?



Who so wishes



“let him stand up”


above what

inclination

from what

reclining state



“and turn”


at last away from all

inertia?



“unto God”


advance

approach

the Wish of Him

Who wishes

we might wish so?



Who so wisheth

to recite this prayer

let him stand up

and turn


unto God.

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Poems of the Journey: In Circumambulation

Given the rather dense nature of recent postings, I feel a need to look upwards, to the Beauty that, in the final analysis, is the single point of knowledge, which the ignorant have multiplied, the beginning and the end of the journey, the very thing that in the end, makes us recklessly throw caution into the air and, forgetting what we read in the books of the grammarians, the stronghold of our certainties, cast ourselves into His sea.

"The death of self is needed here, not rhetoric and grammar
Be then as nothing, and walk upon the waves".



In Circumambulation

I go around in circles seeking entrance to Your dwelling, and each time my very soul cries out - thus far, no further. The hair’s breadth that separates us stretches to infinity when I try to bridge the gap. Circling Your home, I return always to this spot. Circumambulating Your presence, I arrive once more to my starting point.

Cherished one! The love of You has filled me and exceeded me and therefore broken me. What is this union whose taste is separation? This caress that makes clear I cannot touch You? What is this water that makes athirst, this sobering wine, this food that sates with yet more hunger?

And yet though alone, disconsolate and helplessly enraptured, I remain intoxicated, drunk with Your majesty, sighing with relief amidst anxiety in the intuition of Your name, the Merciful. No voice is sweeter than Yours, no comfort real outside Your arms. All else but You in the end falters, and I cling to You, and am pacified. I place my trials at Your feet like petals, and inhale Your own fragrance, the perfume of Your grace. The consciousness of Your presence, beyond my separation, fills me with joy, and the colours of this world dissolve in the radiance of Your face, and the murmur of the world is stilled at the sound of Your footsteps, and I with all creation watch, breathless, the miracle that is Your gait.

Beloved! Watch me melting, dissolving like clay in the ocean of Your name, the All-Glorious. Be with me, my friend, my protector, for I fear oblivion, I fear perpetual, final separation. I fear to go down into Your waters as a little ball of clay, diminished but unvanished. Forgive me, precious one, my want of trust. Overlook my fears. Visit my soul.

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