Mauloud: Starting from here - Part 1 - Abd al-Hayy Moore - Remembrance: Proceedings of the First Annual Milad an-Nabiﷺ Conference, Chicago, 1994

 Part 1 :  STARTING FROM HERE

Starting from here

in order to find the heart that

   passes through station after station

on its way to the goal

in order to see the flashing reflection in which

against the whole starry background of the 

     seen and unseen cosmos,

the light of illuminated one, Muhammad 

ﷺ, 

-- beside whom there are only shadows --

shows,

no action needed

no gesture of ours but the 

whole rapidly fluttering celluloid motion picture

threaded atomically through all

    slits in the universe

at once

so that all scenes

at once 

flash past

and are entirely resolved --

to see, to suddenly, with no guile face

  to face, with no preconceived

cartoon however serious, no projected

experiential image, but rather

an image from himself beamed

outward to us from the innermost vantage

that whole light burst forth

upon our shores in wave after wave of

pure resplendence, flowering flood after

  gush of foam in which each

     bubble a is picture and each

            picture inside is exact

that the shine of the SentOne.

   Beloved Prophet Muhammad    

ﷺ,

whose edges are

self's edges themselves

edgeness  itself , whole

total vastness in that in which we

sit or stand, by canyon's rim or

twilit grim protruberance

out like a peninsula into the oceans of the heart

      in terrestrial turbulence or

          sky's overturned 

concave bowl of stars, all floating so lacily

   apart, held by fine webs of

       traceries finer than the 

           finest thought of fineness

that sublest influence

that keeps things from snapping apart

and driftinf off into alien spaces --

O Muhammad     !

that face his

bent from First Light

  over his hands in his lap

under the Tree of Loyalty

that being he was

under the cloud that always

     shadowed him

        shading him --

that transmitter he was 

of stature and nobility

to the creature of Reality

   most loved by God

but grovelling in idolatry

that Light that went ahead

having been

the first light shed

from the first burst

   from nothing but

Be! And it is !

Being from us, having been from then

the ultimate Word from the primordial Sea!

Source: Remembrance : Proceedings of First Annual International Milad an-Nabi  ﷺ Conference, Chicago 1994 , Edited by Alan Abdal Haqq Godlas Ph.D. Assistant Professor, University of Georgia

Published by Naqshbandiya Foundation for Islamic Education (NFIE)