The Far Mosque (3 page)

Rain

With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.

Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.

No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I've written:

“Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”

The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.

The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.

I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.

If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.

The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.

The City

First the smell of wet earth.

Then fresh bread baking.

Great stone lions.

An obelisk.

An abandoned umbrella, broken by wind.

Each leaf on the drying pavement perfectly circled in rain.

This is where kings lie down.

This is where the wounded come to.

Event

Eight white birds, wings tipped with black, flying away. Snow stretches below from dark to darkness.

This is the image of the soul leaving
, says Catherine.
I sent this postcard to my friends to announce the death of my sister.

Dusty blue above the pyramid of Saqqara. The kingdom ends here and the desert begins.

Near a carved doorway, a guard lurks. For five pounds he lets me go down into the cold inner tombs.

There, the ancient etchings have been defaced by hieroglyphic graffiti. “First dynasty ruffians,” the guard explains, in pieces.

The roof is missing from the temple at the gate. Only the pillars attest to it.

There is a consonant in the middle of my Arabic name that my tongue cannot manage.

I mispronounce myself.

In a room full of shards at the museum, realizing the Egyptian artists
practiced.
Over and over again: a human figure from the side. Two feet evenly placed.

No attempt at approaching or retreating figures.

I love this painting of the cathedral by Van Gogh
, says Catherine.
There is no door, no way to get in.

The River's Address

Slow in the evening light through tree-covered streets

sounds develop unenvelopable—

Troubadour, river-citizen, can you navigate the sound's course

to my far shore's ecstasy?

Be gray here, be broken and strafed, fully roused and drawn here,

like a compass needle, find yourself bound and unintelligible.

You followed the shrift north from the city into the mountains,

to the place you eddy, churn, spell out the moon's tidal courses.

River-chaser, compass-worn, here the source spills to the sea,

and here the waters wend from the sea back to the source.

Unsire yourself—instead of street-maps and sounding depths

trace your name, trace the trees, trace the night into your mind.

Close your eyes and listen to the sound—try to remember—

or try to forget—here is the place you could turn and return.

Precipice

We came to the next part together and eager,

trying on the accretion of coats,

your rough cheek against mine.

Cauldron eyes, you're striking, ferrous, uncurdling me.

All points of passage between two bodies

are points of danger.

What will be left as “what-I-believe-in”

hits the surface of the water from a great height?

Now no passengers, no sails, no anchor, only the me-craft,

swimming like crazy through fire-sleeved water with you.

Breathing it, being burned by it.

Thinking sometimes to walk on it.

Also being encircled.

Also being dispersed.

After I Said It

And after I said it

After I fell from the window

After I turned down the bed of history

Turned down the ocean road

Far enough down the ocean road

To dune-grasses, seagulls

In these other days

In another life

I did not say it

And in a different life

In my third life

I did not even think it

At the window

In my favorite blue shirt

Light sparkling up from the water

In my fourth life, angels

In my fifth life, windows

Ghost Boat

Sails quickly by the open window, a slight echo against a bottle

hung by the moon's sickly cords to mark its passage.

Sometimes I hear voices.

The settling house always creaks, marking time invisibly, erratically.

I move about my business, unsettled.

There's a shivering echo under the second hand …

Erotic blasphemy of its unheard anchor,

dragging across the floorboards . . .

Thicket

The story unfolds like this: a blameless father

loves the as yet unharmed son.

The son is somewhat randy and alarmed

at his appearance in an orthodox world.

Does it hurt him that he's been cut from the tribe of sons

who believe, are unarmed, who recite all the rules?

It's the father who believes in God.

The son believes in the father.

The father in this story is guileless,

not trying to call God's bluff.

And unbelievably to all,

the son willingly opens his throat to the universe.

Neither one of them seeking to see Him,

not saying His name, not asking to be saved.

Hunger

In the Christian version of the story,

Ishmael lies limp on the ground,

Hagar, mother of the hungry, beginning to rise up,

one arm flailing, stricken.

She does not even see the necessary angel,

coming to reveal the hidden spring's location.

Unlearn the passage of time.

Unlearn the snatches of music.

The wind which followed you to this place.

In the Muslim version, she knows Ishmael is dying,

but doesn't wait to find out what happens next.

Like Abraham with the sacrificial knife in his hand,

she does not expect rescue from the sky.

She would never expect the earth beneath the boy would crack,

a spring would bubble up there, water filling his mouth.

Alone in the desert, between two mountains, she's gone

before his heels begin hammering the rock in the spasm of death—

The Return of Music

The bridge of birches stretches down to the horizon.

A ridge of wings descending into the leaves.

Turn now in a note sent thither.

Thither around and the wind strikes.

Orange, the trees are aflame.

Scarlet. Called here, you came.

Light carving shadows into tree bark.

You translate this into other languages, all antiquated and still.

An anthem of ether. Shorn, you always wondered:

what willful course have you carved through your history?

In the tree-capped valley, the lustrous wind chafes through.

Leaf fence uncurl. The valley wends the way the music went.

The sapphire sky, unbelievable, but there.

These moments against the years you cannot believe.

This hover of music winging down from the mountains

you cannot believe.

But here in the trees, here above the river, here as the season

stitches itself into fog then frost, you will.

Here as you unfold, unsummon, uncry, you will.

Unopened, you will. Unhappen, you will.

These moments against the years, you will.

Unmoment you will.

Unyear you will. Unyou you will.

Unwill you will—

   
4

Dear Rumi

You've forgotten the other life in which

Shams-e-Tabriz threw your books into the fountain.

The ink, finally unrecognizable,

reached for you with dissipating lust.

Once I went up the mountain at daybreak, and still met pilgrims

coming down who had woken for the journey earlier.

In the tomb of not-Shams I prayed and prayed to be found.

Am I the sun inside me?

Shams will walk out the back door and never return.

You will go mad—spend years looking for him.

One day in the marketplace, estranged and weeping,

you will understand the farthest mosque is the one within,

and that the sun in the sky is not the one you orbit around,

nor the one who went out the back door and never returned.

Somewhere in the world now, every minute,

a sun is dropping over the horizon into yesterday.

At the fountain in the village square,

the books are still sinking, bereft of your hands.

Even the mountains are bending down to try to save them.

Dear Shams-e-Tabriz, I do not mourn.

You spindle me, sun-thorn, to the sky.

Said: In the Rain

Wide in the hills he came to unearth the golden tablets.

You put all this together one afternoon walking home in rain.

Last night, after playing Satie you briefly believed

the back of the mind was the only religion that mattered.

Perturbed, you never wanted words graven in fire,

but wished to be found there, buried in the hill-dirt,

in the rain, a follower of a religion of water,

and why not?

Why not be an acolyte of the twisting ribbon of river?

What else floods its way from great rock to oblivion?

In a night divided into Satie and self-evidence,

why not the religion of what always seeps back to itself?

Why not a religion of water in a time of great fires?

You fear you may drown, but your birth in it implies otherwise.

Not that it is impossible to drown, but that

this whole time you have been drowning.

Maya or Mayaar

You will always be gone.

All matter edges itself to dust.

Sunlight a pool or flower or fountain.

Music breaking the room to shards.

But why fret? In one language
maya
means

“all these molecules are breaking.”

Your hands, the music, the paper, are not real.

Not pieces of liquid or light, but light years.

On the other side of the world you were taught

other names for things.

Mr. William touches the surface of the water with his hand,

says:
mayaar.

Water, light, light on the surface of the water

or shining from beneath the water, are all fibs and fortunes.

Music can break its fall.

Light could speak.

A year could open between
maya
and
mayaar

That would provide perfect pitch against which you could practice.

Beyond that you're flailing, moon-licked, stunned,

Music, sunstruck, rainstorm, begun—

Rhyme

Restless your surface rise up be unraveled

Unwrap the dusk to a light shell

All the crevices in the oak are pierced by moon chords

Rough sky unlocked shredded by meteors

Vision-dusted thirsty night's blue fastenings

Second time this earth year the sun I leapt up in anger

Birch bark unribbons to reveal all the secret roads

Sun soaks the day's façade in clouds and clots

How fully I tack myself to the wind of anger

While you life up the mountain match-struck immaculate

Sun oracle prophesy solar flares along my skin

Wind oracle forgive me perennially rude

A long secret road unfastens from earth

Frozen luck-thin snapping in unseasonable cold

Four white roads crossing nothing into nothing

Such low light through the bottle hanging

Breath sieve mountain come break at the sea

When lava that new country first enters the water

The rock an immense fire river pouring onto the beach

Saying all the words in the world rhyme

Will wind winterful wending flood

A bell brooding somewhere oracle

A wolf-note sounding against the hush

Somewhere thorned to the sun-spindle

Spendthrift wind run spindle din drift

Music kin shift cindered candle theft

Soot riddle wicked fire

Ash answer wind mouth

Cave earth throat explain

Why all the unhinged worlds rhyme

Olga omen old friend

Meddle metal birth foam

Green notebook winter road

Over sound world sheet

Ocean home metal written sun verse

Curt whisper absurd wishes winter thirst

Sleep Bowl

The light bowl

of your voice

Sounds across the surface of my sleep

bit by bit coming to it

White wings brushing

against the eardrum

You were named in me thirteen years ago

by my mother rust-clad at the promise river

The dozen different versions of me

being carried on drafts away

Sleep little sweat-lodge, spirit house,

imaginary boy, petaled to my side, breathing

Saying his father's name

across the bowl of my sleep