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The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy

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The Ramadan Sonnets - Abd al-Hayy
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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