The Cloak of the Saint: Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore - Sufi Illuminations Journal 2008

 

                                The Cloak of the Saint

                              Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

                                                                        1

                                The cloak of the saint was filled with roses  

                                  The cloak of the saint rose above the city

                         The cloak of the saint was thrown over the back of chair

                                     It slowly filled with a human form

                                     It was filled with the sound of wind

                                       It floated down the mountainside

                                           Sheep it passed turned golden

                       Rocks glowed in its light as it flowed across their surfaces

                                 It sat at the table of the poor and broke bread

                               It spoke to a lone man on a rooftop or mountaintop

                                     A lone woman standing by a stream or sink

                                         A child singing to himself in the bath

                       A child playing by herself in a corner filled with bric-a-brac

                                  Or at sea in a lifeboat where a single sailor lies dying

       Or a young scholar weeping for joy in a lamplit mosque in the snow  

                                         Or over silent morning where the birds are

                                                    Just now waking up in the trees

                                                                                2

                                The saint’s cloak is not made of threads interwoven

                                        But of silences between words and then

            Words like pearls lifted and suspended in the air between silences

                                       The saint’s cloak covers windows and doors

                         Our entrances and exits and all the indecisive or decisive

                                                      Moments in between

       Along rolling green hillsides just as the sun first hits them at dawn  

                                 And as the sun pulls its light into darkness at dusk

                            The cloak unfurls and is not light of sun nor dark of night

         And maybe it’s closer to starlight in its distant and elegant splendor

                                  Though it’s as near as the web of skin between

                                              Forefinger and thumb or the

                                  Raw inner flesh of our eyelids in a biting wind

                                  Or in a corridor of mirrors when an eyelash is

                                                          Caught in them

                                  Or alone on a beach where the cloak rises and

                                        Falls with the lull of waves and the

                           Sound of a bell buoy ringing invisibly in the mist

                                   If it were spread out against the sky its

                                       Words could be read more easily

                          Its parchment its scroll-like unrolling across the entire

                       Length and breadth of our lives in its impeccable grammar

                                Its perfect punctuation its start of sentence and

                                                               Single point final

                          The saint’s cloak drifting neither upward nor downward

                                                  But drifting all the same

                                         From one end of us to the other

                                     Through whose fabric towers of ice arise

                                 The living tremor of an uncommon surrender

                                       7/27-28/2004 ( from Cooked Oranges )

                            

 Source: Sufi Illuminations: A Journal Devoted to the Study of Islam & Sufism, Vol.4, No.1 Spring 2008, Published by Naqshbandiya Foundation for Islamic Education (NFIE)