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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
10/27/03 at 03:13:28 |
[color=Green]1 Ramadan [/color] THE INEVITABLE It's like practicing for death. No food or drink during daylight hours no matter what, in the heat of summer or cold of winter, and no way out of it but through sickness, pregnancy, menstruation, madness or travel. So that it's something that comes inevitably each year, like it or not, whether or not you've got a knack for it, and some do, and love to fast, and thrive on it, but I do not, yet each year it makes its visit, and year after year it builds up to be a sweet thing, which makes it like death, the way it's always on the horizon, and an absolute obligation, which must be why Muslims often die well. They've had a lifetime of Ramadans tenderizing them for The Inevitable. And The Inevitable surely comes. |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
10/28/03 at 01:42:01 |
[color=Green]2 Ramadan [/color] HEADACHE Headache, the invalid feeling of being sickly and having to take it easy, testiness when things don't go quit right, annoyance of magnetic gravity things fall in a pile or slide off an incline-not the hunger alone that binds us in brotherhood ultimately with hollow-eyed Ethiopians of this and all other eras, but the fairly, the passing alone down the alien corridors of this world that is such a poignant reminder to us, so that in our momentary physiological grayness when the food finally comes showering at the end of the fast and turns all things back to Technicolor again, and we feel the old soft-shoe lightness in our step again and the old brightness in our smile, the cornucopia dome of the sky turned earthward again, and the arid stretch suddenly fertile, fruits and flowers as if by cinematic magic fill our perceptions, the floodgate of generosity opened to the full, then our body-bound, sense-imprisoned selves expand past identity with one hollow-pitted stomach dusty in the hot rays of a pitiless sun to a non-entity whose single characteristic is gratitude and whose every pulse is animated by the Single Provider of all this and every life's provision |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
10/31/03 at 12:48:12 |
[color=Green]2 Ramadan[/color] ADAM'S INDELIBLE IMPRINTS And we're beaten on the ground of our own physical being like someone taking the end of a plank and beating it in a rock, we're beaten on the earth by our own earthiness of being born, we're beaten against the curved sides of Father Noah's boat, against the prison where beautiful Joseph languished, against the stake Abraham was tied to, against the Ka'ba where the blackened stone of light is kissed as we swiftly pass by it to melt back into the circling herd of similar hungry selves, beaten like old clothes, washed in the downstream and then stamped on by our own feet which have Adam's indelible imprint. The fast beats us with our own slaves on the hard rock of physicality, it takes us to the edge and makes us look down, it takes us to where there is no escape and closes in, it is the release of no release on a day that does end. even an eagle leaps into no sure space, hovers on an updraft searching for food. Hunger finally ends. But so does relief from hunger. |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
10/31/03 at 12:51:06 |
[color=Green]3 Ramadan[/color] WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN When the sun goes down the flood begins. Lettuce leaves open like orchids in spot lit clarity, bread flowers, fruits mature and drop. Grass green as emerald flows with the currents of the sea. This ovoid earth turns through dark and light, its flesh drowsing or aching awake with the cool night or the hot day. It fasts and then feeds on fresh breezes and deep tropical currents of the sea. The garden we planted next to the house with seedlings already started in little green plastic boxes is pushing up and out by that cunning combination of sunlight and water that warms and soaks the soil seeds live in, in their green slow-motion rhythm parallel with the curling currents of the sea. And when we fast during daylight hours, we turn the whole thing upside-down. so that day becomes night, but we walk through the visions of our sleep and interact with other wide-awake sleeper going along their rounds ill tile humdrum currents of the social sea. And when the sun goes down the earth opens up for us, day begins, we break our fast, and enjoy the feast most flowingly, the table is spread, dishes are piled with glistening dates, water-glasses beckon refreshingly. The night is on a slow barge down a long river on its gradual way to join the glimmering currents of the sea. |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
11/03/03 at 05:33:23 |
[color=green]4 Ramadan[/color] MOSES AND THE SAINT A story goes that Moses, peace be upon him, went to find a saint in the desert said to he one of the greatest masters alive. He went into the arid wastes, made a camp, went further, made another camp, went further perhaps than anyone dared to go being Moses, and found, out where the world ends, in a blazing nothingness of sand and sky, lying face down with his chin on the ground, his saint, saying with each breath, in a barely audible voice: Allah—Allah—Allah The sound of his tongue and the heartbeat of his body boomed all the dunes around him to ring in harmony with that Name. Moses was struck dumb. Here, without food, without water, lay the Master of the Age, dry as bone, nearly naked, more like the sand itself than a man. He sat respectfully, the saint not seeing him, but keeping his invocation throbbing on dry lips with a dry tongue: Allah—Allah—Allah At last the saint opened his eyes and saw Moses, who bowed, and asked it there was anything the saint needed. The saint said, after a while, in a very small voice Moses had to bend close to hear: “Yes. If you could bring me a blanket against the cold nights I should be grateful." Moses got up and set out across the dunes again to his last camp, grabbed his blanket and brought it to the man, who was now dead. Shocked, Moses sat in wonder at the sight. Then he got up and went off across the desert to his camp again to bring a shovel to bury him. When he arrived, the body was already dust. Only bones remained. Amazed, Moses set off again into the glare to get a receptacle for the bones, to bring them back to bury them in the town of the saint's birth. When he arrived back at the place where the saint had died. Moses found only a swirling whirlpool of dust where the bones had been, and nothing left but spiraling drifts of white powder twisting in the wind. Moses sat down, his eyes on the ground. Then he put his face on the ground in the ache and questioning of his heart, and asked: O Allah! What is the meaning of this - Your saint gone like a breath in the desert wind? And Allah's voice in the heart of Moses replied: So long as My friend needed nothing but Me I gave him all he required. As soon as he needed something other than Me I took him. |
11/03/03 at 05:37:51 |
SisterHania |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
11/03/03 at 05:40:12 |
[color=green]4 Ramadan [/color] DELIGHT MY DIET Each year a segment of my time on earth turns dry and takes me to the tar edge of my life. I turn from food and drink and lust of eye (and making love in daylight with my wife). Each time it comes the passage becomes clear that thrusts me forward to that day of death, but there's a sweetness that's beyond compare (greater than the rankness of my breath). A something that's like ease, a strength beyond my will sustains the difficulty makes the day all right, creates a lake inside the heart that's still and casts a golden glow upon the night. Each year it comes, my dread turns into quiet-- hardship becomes ease, delight my diet. |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
11/05/03 at 05:38:15 |
[color=green]5 Ramadan[/color] RAMDAN HOUSE GUEST Ramadan has come to live with us. It is God's private apartments moved into our house and taking over. Where doors were are now entranceways into His Garden. Where windows were are continuous waterfalls. Abundance in the dryness. Hidden in the dust: clusters of roses. Sprung from our footsteps: ascents. Climbs past the usual dimensions: the usual ticking clock in the antechamber. The ancient mahogany piano has become rock-crystal, playing only God's music on silent keys. There is a haunting rise and fall of distant melody come close to the inner car, come closer even than our own physicality. a sound more essential than the marrow of our bones or the enormous sailing surface of the corpuscles of our blood, that is His interconnecting rooms leading always past the closed door of His Presence, the open hallways of approach the retreating audience halls where attendants move with melodious precision. and speak in an undertone of avalanche, words of rainforests keeping earth's atmosphere filled with breathable air, deeps of the nearest ocean where various killer whales congregate in affable groups. The earth is an outdoor amphitheater of affable groups, and time a shudder of water across fans of spray at the source of the cascade of all creaturely manifestation. When the rooms are filled with the yearly fast the most geographical distances are drawn near, Watutsi warriors in tiger pelts arrive in silent droves, desert men in blazing white burnooses slide down off their donkeys and come in, Siamese ladies in straight batik skirts stand in angular poses to the click of passing birds, and a white wind sweeps across everything that inhales or intakes, exhales or digests. The very air becomes a stomach turned inside-out in which the sun and all her planets turn in wide swinging arcs in the tonal soup of darkness. God says, "Fasting is Mine." Because He alone knows its dimensions. It contains each ant and microbe in the drama of being a creature. Ramadan has moved into the earth like a different sky settling down on the same dunes. For a month the feast takes place in a heavenly dimension. Trays are brought in from other atmospheres. Our house is His. Its guests belong to Him. The repast is His, the withholding and giving is He alone. |
Re: The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy |
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SisterHania |
11/06/03 at 08:41:23 |
[color=green]5 Ramadan[/color] DIE BEFORE YOU DIE We're never far from the appetites of our body. Our senses are ready to spring at the slightest touch. We stand on the battlefield and survey the possible booty, but once collected, it then becomes too much. We walk inside our flesh-case like a brush wielded by a painter making rapid splashes, filling empty scroll-sheets with the blush of skin-tones come alive in lightning dashes. Existence comes and goes in furtive flashes. Nothing belongs to us. It's all on loan. We are those fleshly bursts like fluttering lashes that open and close oil eyes, and then are gone. If we could see our real deaths we might die. To die while still alive wakes up the eye. |
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