Religion
Snow
Perhaps this is the way
Our world will end: not
In biblical flood, or burning
Apocalypse, but in deep beauty:
Silken white soil, brightened dusk,
All softened, houses, roofs, trees:
Magical kingdoms, greeting-card worlds
Asleep at our world’s window.
And this is death, in its deep white beauty:
Falling within us, falling forever,
Over the heart’s granaries, stored
Against hardship, an always future,
Unused. So many grains, so many
Urgings of love, each alive in
Uniqueness, waiting, always
Waiting for perfect moments
Which smile and are gone. White
Crystals will cover us, and the god
We stored, against pain and loss:
Deep white beauty, absolute.
Hira:
(The Prophet’s First Revelation in the Cave of Hira on the Mountain of Nur)
M.A.R. Habib
Enshrouded in the high mantle of night.
The darkness of idols, greed in business,
Abuse of orphans, widows, women.
Here, from the mountain, I see the darkness
That enfolds the world. Yet now
Another darkness descends on me,
A beating of wings, shuddering, as if
Beating in my own breath, heart, soul:
Shadow everywhere, shadows, all shadow.
What moment is this, opening into
The very soul of time, what mode of time
Unfolding the very breath of
Eternity. God. Worlds above, worlds
Upon worlds. What weight of universe
Descends upon me, spreading through me,
Breathing into my lips, through my language
A voice from so high yet so deep within
Shuddering in Angel breath: O vision
At the edge of vision, wherever I turn
The dark horizon is lit with the form of Angel,
Forcing me, wherever I turn, he stands,
Confronts, blinding, colossal, power of light
Burning before me yet deep within:
Archangel.
All the forces of mountain and desert
Cry into my heart; the black sky
Thunders in my throat:
All the sources of life, all sense, all
Power of reason, of beauty, the sublime
Freeze in this moment, in this cave,
All resources of language, lips, eyes, hands
Flow and freeze in this one command:
Read! Echoing inside me, pounding,
Read! My own voice. I hear
Myself, from deep within:
I cannot, I cannot read.
Again the echo, pressing louder, harder:
Read! The word, the world, bites
In my head, my frame shivering yet
Numb: I cannot read. Read!
And now, I know the power, know
The hour is too great: What shall I read?
Read in the Name of Thy Lord...
My being is cleft as dread
Spreads through this human form:
It is both Night and Day, the desert
Horizon rises to sky, all heaven
Burning over every grain of sand.
And here I stand, man
Transformed, yearning,
Shivering, breathless, touched
In spirit, breathing a word
The Word.
Hijrah
M.A.R. Habib
A journey, broken
By night and thought
Of warring gods;
desert rock and sand conspired
To feed a vision inflamed
Beyond enchainment;
In a lonely cave, past and future
Kissed with light an old language;
An ancient heritage burned silently its tongue
In a place where shadows danced out Truth;
Dimensions froze in a poetry of wilderness,
Silent, yet meant for human ears.
His eyes upon the horizon
Of a darkened plain;
Eyes upon the horizon:
Wherever he turned, the desert night
Was spread with an archangel’s wings.
A prophetic gaze followed them, now
Who go, whose suffering has exhausted fear, whose steps
Are led by heavy memories:
tortured parents, murdered brethern, whose
Faith humbles the Unknown:
Pitiful their baggage, and lost in their
Knowing, yet attuned somehow
To a sanctity beyond the call of sense
And the politics of living.
Mothers, whose purity burns again;
Children, whose innocence
Impoverishes the promise of the world:
Pioneering a stillness
Fathered by and beyond Word.
Journeying toward the Other, yet
Breathing the dust of this-worldly time: treaties,
Marriages, songs, rites and feuds;
Blemished echoes of the Transcendent Voice;
Stepping onto the plains of Ohad
The old and new warred in his heart;
In mail and helmet, a warrior stared
Across the battlefield between
Two natures.
Mosque
M.A.R. Habib
Here, within your white, white walls
I can stand
Alone with You, the Alone;
Away from the whispers of the world
That bleed in my own heart;
Away from fleeting and fancy,
From the torment that thirsts
In my own soul.
I have felt you, near the rivers of my heart,
As if on the verge of a great promising.
I have sought you, bitterly, in broken lives
Of people twisted over by the world’s disasters;
I have not heard your voice, even faintly,
In the loud ramblings of imams who explain
Your justice as if it were a trite thing.
I know you are not trite or easy:
The path to you is always long;
I know I am never fit for your presence,
I am forever beneath your language,
I am unworthy of your paradise;
I am not fit to fall before you.
But when
O when will you hear
The voices raised of those
Who have erased their lives in your service,
As if on the verge of an eternal reckoning;
Who have killed their ambition
Brought their lust to kneel
Who have murdered their passion
In the coldest of blood-feuds.
When will you hear the cry of
Those who have died for you?
Light: A Passage from the Qur’an
Translated by M.A.R. Habib
God is the Light
Of the Heavens and of the Earth;
His Light is a parable, of
A Lamp within a niche; without the lamp, a glass
Haloed as a brilliant star, lit
From an olive tree, blessed;
Whose soil is neither East nor West;
Its very oil would shine forth
Though untouched by fire:
Light upon Light.
God raises to His Light whom He will;
He engenders parables for men, He
Whose knowing is beyond horizon.
His Light abides in houses, sanctified
For the adoration of His Name. There
Is He glorified, morning and evening
By those whom trade nor profit can
Divert from remembrance of their God
Or from steadfastness in charity and prayer;
Whose sole fear is for the Day
When heart and vision awake
In a new world
Where God rewards their deeds
Giving ever more from His Grace
For God furnishes measurelessly
Those whom He will.
But behold the unbelievers:
Their deeds are like a mirage
In the burning desert: the parched man’s eyes see
Water in the distance; approaching, he finds
Nothing;
Beside him, he finds God, before Whom
He must answer: God,
Whose reckoning is swift.
Or, like darkness on a fathomless sea,
Wave over wave, overcast by cloud:
Darkness upon darkness;
If a man stretch out his hand,
He can scarce see it.
For those deprived of God’s Light
There is no Light.
— Holy Qur’an XXIV. 35-40.
Cloud
M.A.R. Habib
Who, through the deep cloud
Commands, in
Infinite Lordship;
Brooding
Breathing, behind the black tops of
Trees encolumned along the mountain height
Cascading into depth of valley,
Falling into forest, unfolding
Wealth of dazzling green, its richness
Sung by a sea of white-blue cloud.
Who, beyond the drifting shapes that sail the sky,
Beyond the finitude of Forms,
Are You?
Hymn
M.A.R. Habib
Glorious are You, in Your
Aloneness, your
Pale eternal splendour
Beckons, in whose
Depthless light my shadow
Burns
Hold me in Your moving stillness
Let my night pass in
Your day
Sublime are you, whose
Beauty burns in all Being
Exalting all substance
Through the far corners,
Who breathed Your light
First on the face of formlessness, and last
On the forms of Human Reason.
Serene are you, in Your
Otherness, your
Yearning depth embraces me
Your knowing pales before itself
Enthroned in realmlessness
Your wisdom's endless sea
Is adrift in my tears
Absolute are You in Your purity:
The pavilions of Night wear your perfect Form
From East and West Your lanterns rise
Light upon light
World upon world are You, Knower
Of destiny, harbinger
Of Time's still path
Who finds me bowed
In the rhythms of fate
Your splendour, it is in both worlds
Your light, it fills the far corners of Being: