Poetry

Paraphrasing in verse a brief talk by Shaykh Amin on the third night of Ramadan 1444

What - he asks instructively -
Is the primary purpose
Of revelation?

There are many:
Reciting it
Teaching it
Citing it
Preaching it
Understanding it
Reaching it
But the primary remains
Reciting it

Reciting it

Tilawah

We’re in Ramadan
The month of the Quran
In which we recite from it
Day and night from it
Till our hearts might thrum it

But then, fasting
Where does that come into it
A feast for the soul that’s been to it
Depriving ourselves
Of food and drink
Suppressing impulses beastly
To channel the angelic status quo
For angels don’t eat nor drink you know

And what does all that starvation do
To you, struggling khalid?
It lightens your soul
And the soul that is light
Can carry the weight of the Word

It’s a heavy Word
It just didn’t come
Easy on the heart of a man
In a cave in Makkah

SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa Sallam

But what he endured
Imbued him with Nūr
And by his wasīlah
It floats on our breath till
It rolls off our tongues
Like dew off a petal

Like water it flows

And here in Ramadan
The month of the Quran
In which we recite from it
Day and night from it
Till our hearts might thrum it

The more we recite it
The lighter the soul
And the lighter the soul
Recites it some more

Believers all over
With angelic bearing
Reciting in parts
So the needle of rahmah
Pulling wahy thread
May stitch up our
Broken hearts

We do this as the moon
Waxes and wanes
Through the end in store
When the night comes that measures
A thousand months and more

But a Nūr so intense
Cannot stay disconnected
From creatures of Nūr
Who crave its sweet nectar

So a portal is blown
Through the heavens, its gates
Fly open to pour out
The Nūr on their wings

Thus throng countless angels
To this planet enveloped
By the collective breath
Of believers reciting
Quran, just reciting
Quran, just reciting
Quran

We’re now in Ramadan
The month of the Quran
In which we recite from it
Day and night from it
Till our hearts might thrum it

The fool belittles content
And glorifies form

The trapped belittle form

The trapped fool belittles

The free fool writes
And that for the paltry price
Of goose bumps or victuals

Almost everyone else is cool
Belittling the fool
Or belittling the belittling

While the silent rule 

To see him as the seal of prophethood
Is all the nūr you’ll need to brave the end

Every joy a passing moment
Every grief a passing moment
Every moment gone
Like water
Lost in the whorls of a dream

The farther we go down the road of time
The wider the field of our vision
That when we look back to things from the past
To measure what is and what isn’t

We take in so much, much more than we had
The moment the moments came down
It colors the grays calamity cast
With tinctures of azure and brown

But some things can only be read
Once time and its cloaks have been shed

Have you
set free your fears
into the endless blue
before the Will Eternal will
have you

Khalid, come a mendicant
With nothing to your name
But unabating love for him
Whom angelkind proclaim

Then leave a mendicant no more
With heart and will so steeled
To bear all brand of wound and scar
To despair never yield

You’re in his flock
Now heed his call
Or find yourself astray

The ticking clock
Will brings us all
Up on the longest Day