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A Sufi Saint contemplates his imminent dissolution

Goodbye my Sufi friends and lovers
Nothing exists to connect you to me
Tayyar is honourable, full of good intent
I will rise from the trap of the world
I will not ask you to be my servant in paradise
You are my dancer, I am your poet, we laugh
Together on days when we taste the rain.
When you sew, I  watch you and fall in love
Again I remember our first meeting
Amongst the sweet smell of the jasmine
In the rose garden where we couldn’t be
Seen or overheard. You were my perfumed
Idol. You are my window on eternity.
When Mansur Al-Hallaj was finally executed
For the blasphemy of being a Sufi I knew
My time would soon come. Rulers do not
Forgive. So, on this tight night of bone-white
Light I do not think of my execution. The Day
Of Death will come regardless. They say
Do not buy wine from a foreigner but this wine
From Andalusia is so sweet and clear, it is like a mirror
Or a still lake, we see ourselves clear and calm.
Unmoved by ripples, we finally draw near, kiss.
On this day of rumbling thunder and dark clouds,
Skies swirl and whorl on this day of days.
I am not an unbeliever but I know there are many
Truths. I was accused of paganism for reading the Greek.
Herodotus, the father of History, he did not seek to
Write only a Greek version of the Greco-Persian wars
He sought to help us all to learn from past conflicts.
For Herodotus attributes the causes of war
To both divine and human agents,
Causes he did not see as being mutually exclusive,
But rather as being mutually interconnected.
Will this day of rumbling never be done?
Be sure to testify, always, to the spirit of tomorrow
And kiss me again at this door of eternity,
Your hand shakes,
Djinns* are all around us. Listen to the wind.
We will not be separated long, my love.

 

* -djinn (Arabic: جن‎, jinn), a), are supernatural creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian and later Islamic mythology and theology.

◄ Re-vision

MESCALINE ►

Comments

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John Marks

Tue 22nd Dec 2020 22:19

Thank you so much to Stephen and Cathy. In my opinion this is a poem that speaks to eternal verities: the bravery of people who resist persecution of their beliefs and people brave enough to face the fact of mortality. These topics are rarely popular but are always close to my heart.

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