Based on the Works of Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ghazali* and Mufti Muhammad Shafi
*not to be confused with Shaykh Abu Hamed al-Ghazali
Surah Fatiha
The surah “represents the very heart and soul of the Quran”
It is considered one of the most illustrious surahs.
Speaks of the essential covenant between humans and the Lord, upon which man’s mission on earth is founded.
It is an “earnest prayer to God, heart felt plea” for guidance and to gain the pleasure of God.
Comprises of 7 verses: First three: Praise of Allah. Last three: contain a prayer or request from Allah, which Allah (SWT) in His Infinite Mercy has Taught him/her to recite
“In the Name of God, The Merciful the Compassionate”
These are some of the most exalted names of Allah and when recited they provide protection.
“Praise be to Allah, Lord of all Creation”
Hadith: When we recite this verse, Allah says “My servant has paid his homage to Me.”
Whenever you praise anything in this world, you are essentially praising Allah (SWT) as He is the Creator of all these things.
Praising Allah also emphasizes Tawheed (oneness of Allah), as He is the Creator, and a creation is not worthy of the ultimate praise.
This Ayat entails 3 main ideas:
1. Praise and glorification of the grandeur and magnificence of Allah
2. Praise to God the Creator and provider for His favors and grace He provides to us
3. Gratitude and thanks to God the Creator and provider for His Favors and Grace He provides to us
“Lord of all Creation (all the world).”
Rabb: Lexically signifies “the One Who Nurtures”: “nurturing implies developing a thing by gradual progression, for the creation’s own good, until it reaches perfection.”
Alameen: “the worlds” include all possible forms of existence: the sky, the earth, plants, minerals, and, of course, men).”
Assertion that Allah is Master of all, from the greatest and humblest of creation
Every animal, plant, human, star, planet, anything in the earth, skies, anything that exists, existed, or will exist, “is subordinate to God, subservient to God, bound to His Power, totally dependant on His Grace, Blessings and Compassion.”
“The Merciful, the Compassionate”
Hadith: Allah Replies: “My servant has praised Me.”
These attributes of Allah may follow the previous ayat because it shows that Allah does not nurture humanity because of some external compulsion or inner need, but due to His attribute of Mercy.
“Human beings and all creation live by the grace and mercy of Allah.”
Were it not for His Mercy, our lives would be eroded by our sins and faults.
“Master of the Day of Judgment”
Hadith: Allah replies: “My servant has proclaimed My Greatness.”
“Malik”: comes from the root Milki: “which signifies possessing a thing in such a manner that one has the right and power to dispose of it as one likes.”
“So the Day of Requital or Judgment implies that Allah has total mastery on that day, mastery over what is not stated, so in the commentary of al-Kashshaf, this ayat refers to Mastery over everything.”
This day is a reality that is for a large part ignored in our materialistic society.
It has become a subject for satire and ridicule. In areas of education, law, national and international politics, it has been deliberately omitted or swept aside.
However the occurrence of this day, on which all creation will stand before the Lord, is a fact that must be reckoned with.
“This world is a field of action not reward.” That day, will be the day of ultimate justice.
“You alone we worship and You alone we turn for help”
Hadith: Allah says: “This verse is common to Me and My servant. He shall be given what he has prayed for.”
The first three ayats make it clear that humans are completely dependant on Allah (SWT), so the next logical progression for the human to worship Allah alone, so this ayat represent the logical progression of exclusive worship to Allah.
Furthermore, it is logical that once on realizes that Allah is the only one who can suffice your needs, that you turn to Him for help.
Worship does not only include fasting or prayer however. Imam Ghazali in his book, Arba’in, includes:
1. Prayers
2. Prescribe Alms Giving
3. Fasting
4. Hajj
5. Reciting the Quran
6. Remembrance of Allah in all possible situations
7. Earning one’s livelihood in accordance with the Islamic Law.
8. Fulfilling one’s obligations towards one’s companions and neighbors.
9. Persuading people to act righteously and dissuading them from doing what’s forbidden.
10. To follow the Sunnah of the Prophet (S).
“Guide us to the straight path.” “The path of those on who You have Your Grace.” “Not of those who have incurred Your Wrath, nor of those who have gone astray (verses 5-7)”
Hadith: Allah replies: “All this is there for My Servant. He shall be given what he prays for.”
The straight line is the shortest distance between two points and in this way, the straight path is the only sure and direct way to Allah.
These last 3 verses consist of a direct prayer to Allah.
What about someone who is guided? A scholar? Why do they need to keep asking for guidance? To understand this, we must understand the deeper meaning of guidance.
1. First degree of guidance: This meaning of guidance is general and extends to plants, animals, and even minerals. “Nothing exists that does not celebrate His praise, but you do not understand their (mode of) praising. (17:44).
o So there is a level of guidance is common to all creation. “He gave everything its distinctive form and then guided it.” (20:50)
2. Second level of guidance is reserved for the rational creation, human and jinns. Prophets bring this creation to man through revealed books. Some accept and become believers and some reject and become disbelievers.
3. This last degree is very specific to the true believers and it is endless, this is the “tawfiq” or the special blessings and guidance that Allah give to whom He Wills.
o “As for those who follow the straight path, Allah will increase their guidance.” (47:17)
The straight path avoids twists and turns and it is the one that is avoiding the extremes of excess and deficiency
“Those of those on who you have bestowed Your Grace”
Allah explains this group in the following verse, “Those whom Allah has blessed, namely, the prophets, the Sidiqin (the constantly true), the Shuhada, and the righteous.” (4:69)
1. Prophets: closest to Allah
2. Sidiqin: those who have attained spiritual perfection, namely the saints, or People of Allah.
3. Shuhada: the martyrs who sacrifice their life for the faith or bare witness to the truth.
4. Saliheen: those who follow the Islamic law (shariah) in all aspects of life, the pious people.
“Not those who have incurred your Wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.”
The people who have gained Allah’s Anger refer to people who are given guidance and willfully disobey it. This may include blind following of desires over divine command or being deficient in completing what is commanded. In history, the Jews had this characteristic in relation to revelation.
“Those who have gone astray” refers to the those who go beyond the commandments of Allah through ignorance. This category includes people who commit excess or exaggeration in following Allah (SWT). An example of this excessive zeal can be found in the Christians who deified the prophet.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Sibyl at Dawn
The moon now is
Chiseled,
Shriveled to a
Shadow of an arc;
There it flickers,
Pierced through
These inked skies,
Looking upon
Sounds and streets,
Blotted out.
Gates are bolted,
Stars sharpened,
Lamentings seethe
Below.
Scribes sit alert,
Shadows succumb to
Substance,
Yet the sibyl still
Sings
At dawn.
The sibyl still
Sings
At dawn
While others roam across
Those violet skies:
“It’s far away, so far away,
We cannot reach it,”
They cry.
The stars, hoodwinked,
Stare at the sterling sword
Dangling in the sky.
It glows pale now.
Each new dawn will
Make it bloom
Till it becomes blunt,
And these eager ones
Will catch it no more.
Still the sibyl
Sings
At dawn.
Still the sibyl
Sings
At dawn
As sleepers awake.
The moon bloats
And staggers away,
“Why it’s so fat and full,
Like a blotch in the sky.”
The stars feel sympathy.
The moon, and others, float
Across their tides;
The pens scribble fast.
Dungeons bloodshot
Fume their cauldrons –
Soon it will be time
To unleash that red tide
And the sun will bleed.
And the sibyl still
Sings
At dawn.
At dawn
Sings
The sibyl still
While the moon peels off and
Prunes,
“Look, it’s a blade again,
Away, away, it might catch us,”
They cry.
The sibyl laughs.
The shadows sigh and stumble,
The dungeons roar and rumble:
Soon the sun will rise red,
All threads, black and white
Will unravel as shreds
For all to catch.
The sibyl unsheathes
Its wings,
Gyres in its cage
And stares.
“I am blind, I am blind –
What noise rises from below.
The beasts are loose.
I am blinded,
Only shadows and sleep lurk here.”
24 Sha‘ban 1430
16 August 2009
Chiseled,
Shriveled to a
Shadow of an arc;
There it flickers,
Pierced through
These inked skies,
Looking upon
Sounds and streets,
Blotted out.
Gates are bolted,
Stars sharpened,
Lamentings seethe
Below.
Scribes sit alert,
Shadows succumb to
Substance,
Yet the sibyl still
Sings
At dawn.
The sibyl still
Sings
At dawn
While others roam across
Those violet skies:
“It’s far away, so far away,
We cannot reach it,”
They cry.
The stars, hoodwinked,
Stare at the sterling sword
Dangling in the sky.
It glows pale now.
Each new dawn will
Make it bloom
Till it becomes blunt,
And these eager ones
Will catch it no more.
Still the sibyl
Sings
At dawn.
Still the sibyl
Sings
At dawn
As sleepers awake.
The moon bloats
And staggers away,
“Why it’s so fat and full,
Like a blotch in the sky.”
The stars feel sympathy.
The moon, and others, float
Across their tides;
The pens scribble fast.
Dungeons bloodshot
Fume their cauldrons –
Soon it will be time
To unleash that red tide
And the sun will bleed.
And the sibyl still
Sings
At dawn.
At dawn
Sings
The sibyl still
While the moon peels off and
Prunes,
“Look, it’s a blade again,
Away, away, it might catch us,”
They cry.
The sibyl laughs.
The shadows sigh and stumble,
The dungeons roar and rumble:
Soon the sun will rise red,
All threads, black and white
Will unravel as shreds
For all to catch.
The sibyl unsheathes
Its wings,
Gyres in its cage
And stares.
“I am blind, I am blind –
What noise rises from below.
The beasts are loose.
I am blinded,
Only shadows and sleep lurk here.”
24 Sha‘ban 1430
16 August 2009
The Start of the Universe: April 1992 - Elizabeth Jennings
They've heard the echoes of the starting stars,
They say, these physicists. I am amazed
And feel the sky is shrinking. Is it Mars
Or Saturn signaling? So they have blazed
A trail for us and some conclude this means
Chance is the master and creation is
A random happening. Yet each star leans
Upon our reckoning, and the galaxies
Shrink to our telescopes. I never thought
Creation could be easy or took place
In seven actual days. Now I am caught
Up with the physicists' conclusions, trace
Mankind's beginning to a wonder wrought
Aeons of echoes back, each one a grace.
They say, these physicists. I am amazed
And feel the sky is shrinking. Is it Mars
Or Saturn signaling? So they have blazed
A trail for us and some conclude this means
Chance is the master and creation is
A random happening. Yet each star leans
Upon our reckoning, and the galaxies
Shrink to our telescopes. I never thought
Creation could be easy or took place
In seven actual days. Now I am caught
Up with the physicists' conclusions, trace
Mankind's beginning to a wonder wrought
Aeons of echoes back, each one a grace.
Our false oracles have failed. We need a new vision to live by - Ben Okri
From The Times
October 30, 2008
Our false oracles have failed. We need a new vision to live by
Huge financial success has hidden the moral bankruptcy in our civilisation, We must rediscover our lost values or perish
The crisis affecting the economy is a crisis of our civilisation. The values that we hold dear are the very same that got us to this point. The meltdown in the economy is a harsh metaphor of the meltdown of some of our value systems. A house is on fire; we see flames coming through the windows on the second floor and we think that that is where the fire is raging. In fact it is raging elsewhere.
For decades poets and artists have been crying in the wilderness about the wasteland, the debacle, the apocalypse. But apparent economic triumph has deafened us to these warnings. Now it is necessary to look at this crisis as a symptom of things gone wrong in our culture.
Individualism has been raised almost to a religion, appearance made more important than substance. Success justifies greed, and greed justifies indifference to fellow human beings. We thought that our actions affected only our own sphere but the way that appalling decisions made in America have set off a domino effect makes it necessary to bring new ideas to the forefront of our civilisation. The most important is that we are more connected than we suspected. A visible and invisible mesh links economies and cultures around the globe to the great military and economic centres.
The only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the values that we have lived by in the past 30 years. It wouldn't do just to improve the banking system - we need to redesign the whole edifice.
There ought to be great cries in the land, great anger. But there is a strange silence. Why? Because we are all implicated. We have drifted to this dark unacceptable place together. We took the success of our economy as proof of the rightness of its underlying philosophy. We are now at a crossroad. Our future depends not on whether we get through this, but on how deeply and truthfully we examine its causes.
I strayed into the oldest church in Cheltenham not long ago and, with no intention in mind, opened the Bible. The passage that met my eyes was from Genesis, about Joseph and the seven lean years of famine. Something struck me in that passage. It was the tranquillity of its writing, the absence of hysteria.
They got through because someone had a vision before the event. What we need now more than ever is a vision beyond the event, a vision of renewal.
As one looks over the landscape of contemporary events, one thing becomes very striking. The people to whom we have delegated decision-making in economic matters cannot be unaware of the consequences. Those whose decisions have led to the economic collapse reveal to us how profoundly lacking in vision they were. This is not surprising. These were never people of vision. They are capable of making decisions in the economic sphere, but how these decisions relate to the wider world was never part of their mental make-up. This is a great flaw of our world.
To whom do we turn for guidance in our modern world? Teachers have had their scope limited by the prevailing fashions of education. Artists have become more appreciated for scandal than for important revelations about our lives. Writers are entertainers, provocateurs or- if truly serious - more or less ignored. The Church speaks with a broken voice. Politicians are more guided by polls than by vision. We have disembowelled our oracles. Anybody who claims to have something to say is immediately suspect.
So now that we have taken a blowtorch to the idea of sages, guides, bards, holy fools, seers, what is left in our cultural landscape? Scientific rationality has proved inadequate to the unpredictabilities of the times. It is enlightening that the Pharoah would not have saved Egypt from its seven lean years with the best economic advisers to hand.
This is where we step out into a new space. What is most missing in the landscape of our times is the sustaining power of myths that we can live by.
If we need a new vision for our times, what might it be? A vision that arises from necessity or one that orientates us towards a new future? I favour the latter. It is too late to react only from necessity. One of our much neglected qualities is our creative ability to reshape our world. Our planet is under threat. We need a new one-planet thinking.
We must bring back into society a deeper sense of the purpose of living. The unhappiness in so many lives ought to tell us that success alone is not enough. Material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy.
If we look at alcoholism rates, suicide rates and our sensation addiction, we must conclude that this banishment of higher things from the garden has not been a success. The more the society has succeeded, the more its heart has failed.
Everywhere parents are puzzled as to what to do with their children. Everywhere the children are puzzled as to what to do with themselves. The question everywhere is, you get your success and then what?
We need a new social consciousness. The poor and the hungry need to be the focus of our economic and social responsibility.
Every society has a legend about a treasure that is lost. The message of the Fisher King is as true now as ever. Find the grail that was lost. Find the values that were so crucial to the birth of our civilisation, but were lost in the intoxication of its triumphs.
We can enter a new future only by reconnecting what is best in us, and adapting it to our times. Education ought to be more global; we need to restore the pre-eminence of character over show, and wisdom over cleverness. We need to be more a people of the world.
All great cultures renew themselves by accepting the challenges of their times, and, like the biblical David, forge their vision and courage in the secret laboratory of the wild, wrestling with their demons, and perfecting their character. We must transform ourselves or perish.
The Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri will be reporting from the US about race and the presidential election for The Times on Saturday
October 30, 2008
Our false oracles have failed. We need a new vision to live by
Huge financial success has hidden the moral bankruptcy in our civilisation, We must rediscover our lost values or perish
The crisis affecting the economy is a crisis of our civilisation. The values that we hold dear are the very same that got us to this point. The meltdown in the economy is a harsh metaphor of the meltdown of some of our value systems. A house is on fire; we see flames coming through the windows on the second floor and we think that that is where the fire is raging. In fact it is raging elsewhere.
For decades poets and artists have been crying in the wilderness about the wasteland, the debacle, the apocalypse. But apparent economic triumph has deafened us to these warnings. Now it is necessary to look at this crisis as a symptom of things gone wrong in our culture.
Individualism has been raised almost to a religion, appearance made more important than substance. Success justifies greed, and greed justifies indifference to fellow human beings. We thought that our actions affected only our own sphere but the way that appalling decisions made in America have set off a domino effect makes it necessary to bring new ideas to the forefront of our civilisation. The most important is that we are more connected than we suspected. A visible and invisible mesh links economies and cultures around the globe to the great military and economic centres.
The only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the values that we have lived by in the past 30 years. It wouldn't do just to improve the banking system - we need to redesign the whole edifice.
There ought to be great cries in the land, great anger. But there is a strange silence. Why? Because we are all implicated. We have drifted to this dark unacceptable place together. We took the success of our economy as proof of the rightness of its underlying philosophy. We are now at a crossroad. Our future depends not on whether we get through this, but on how deeply and truthfully we examine its causes.
I strayed into the oldest church in Cheltenham not long ago and, with no intention in mind, opened the Bible. The passage that met my eyes was from Genesis, about Joseph and the seven lean years of famine. Something struck me in that passage. It was the tranquillity of its writing, the absence of hysteria.
They got through because someone had a vision before the event. What we need now more than ever is a vision beyond the event, a vision of renewal.
As one looks over the landscape of contemporary events, one thing becomes very striking. The people to whom we have delegated decision-making in economic matters cannot be unaware of the consequences. Those whose decisions have led to the economic collapse reveal to us how profoundly lacking in vision they were. This is not surprising. These were never people of vision. They are capable of making decisions in the economic sphere, but how these decisions relate to the wider world was never part of their mental make-up. This is a great flaw of our world.
To whom do we turn for guidance in our modern world? Teachers have had their scope limited by the prevailing fashions of education. Artists have become more appreciated for scandal than for important revelations about our lives. Writers are entertainers, provocateurs or- if truly serious - more or less ignored. The Church speaks with a broken voice. Politicians are more guided by polls than by vision. We have disembowelled our oracles. Anybody who claims to have something to say is immediately suspect.
So now that we have taken a blowtorch to the idea of sages, guides, bards, holy fools, seers, what is left in our cultural landscape? Scientific rationality has proved inadequate to the unpredictabilities of the times. It is enlightening that the Pharoah would not have saved Egypt from its seven lean years with the best economic advisers to hand.
This is where we step out into a new space. What is most missing in the landscape of our times is the sustaining power of myths that we can live by.
If we need a new vision for our times, what might it be? A vision that arises from necessity or one that orientates us towards a new future? I favour the latter. It is too late to react only from necessity. One of our much neglected qualities is our creative ability to reshape our world. Our planet is under threat. We need a new one-planet thinking.
We must bring back into society a deeper sense of the purpose of living. The unhappiness in so many lives ought to tell us that success alone is not enough. Material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy.
If we look at alcoholism rates, suicide rates and our sensation addiction, we must conclude that this banishment of higher things from the garden has not been a success. The more the society has succeeded, the more its heart has failed.
Everywhere parents are puzzled as to what to do with their children. Everywhere the children are puzzled as to what to do with themselves. The question everywhere is, you get your success and then what?
We need a new social consciousness. The poor and the hungry need to be the focus of our economic and social responsibility.
Every society has a legend about a treasure that is lost. The message of the Fisher King is as true now as ever. Find the grail that was lost. Find the values that were so crucial to the birth of our civilisation, but were lost in the intoxication of its triumphs.
We can enter a new future only by reconnecting what is best in us, and adapting it to our times. Education ought to be more global; we need to restore the pre-eminence of character over show, and wisdom over cleverness. We need to be more a people of the world.
All great cultures renew themselves by accepting the challenges of their times, and, like the biblical David, forge their vision and courage in the secret laboratory of the wild, wrestling with their demons, and perfecting their character. We must transform ourselves or perish.
The Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri will be reporting from the US about race and the presidential election for The Times on Saturday
Running after
So we peruse through passages,
Those stubborn asymptotes that
Snail towards eternity.
And then we plot each path,
As a perfect perforation
On paper to admire
A pattern that we knit through.
Neat. Precise, plagiarizing
The mechanics of the cosmos.
How dare we unreel darkness
Only to see better.
But then, how often is perfection
Willing to have itself imitated.
How often does the mirror speak truly
To that which stares back?
It merely frames what can be
Reached.
So then shall we splinter illusion
To find its own shadow across dark, deep skies.
A bottle full of ink, a parchment pale;
Each slivered phrase is a firework
Blotting my eternity, confusing me
To believe that certainty is only
A galaxy away.
22 July, 2007
Those stubborn asymptotes that
Snail towards eternity.
And then we plot each path,
As a perfect perforation
On paper to admire
A pattern that we knit through.
Neat. Precise, plagiarizing
The mechanics of the cosmos.
How dare we unreel darkness
Only to see better.
But then, how often is perfection
Willing to have itself imitated.
How often does the mirror speak truly
To that which stares back?
It merely frames what can be
Reached.
So then shall we splinter illusion
To find its own shadow across dark, deep skies.
A bottle full of ink, a parchment pale;
Each slivered phrase is a firework
Blotting my eternity, confusing me
To believe that certainty is only
A galaxy away.
22 July, 2007
Anodyne
It stuck in his throat, he said.
Lamentings poured, silence bled
Yet there came that Porter
To narrate where it all led.
Try prayer, try harder, she said,
‘Despondency is a sin’.
I fumbled an answer
Yet there was no crime to dread.
But You have said it’s narrow.
I am towed forward, slow.
And the path seems to stretch
To a White Light far aglow.
I have dared to crawl forward,
To see, share what lies ahead
Yet I know not, can’t tell
If Your Sign I have misread.
What does my amen conclude.
I see shadow, stars hoodwinked.
I know not where must I tread.
Lead me, as needle Pulls thread.
6 May 2008.
Lamentings poured, silence bled
Yet there came that Porter
To narrate where it all led.
Try prayer, try harder, she said,
‘Despondency is a sin’.
I fumbled an answer
Yet there was no crime to dread.
But You have said it’s narrow.
I am towed forward, slow.
And the path seems to stretch
To a White Light far aglow.
I have dared to crawl forward,
To see, share what lies ahead
Yet I know not, can’t tell
If Your Sign I have misread.
What does my amen conclude.
I see shadow, stars hoodwinked.
I know not where must I tread.
Lead me, as needle Pulls thread.
6 May 2008.
A Whiter Shade of Pale
“Must be strangely exciting to watch the stoic squirm.
Must be somewhat heartening to watch shepherd meet Shepherd.”
- Alanis Morisette, Uninvited
These cryptic compass points
That plot the corners of this paper universe,
Confuse me now.
I am to wait
Till a fuller moon, deep in its white,
Ruffles oceans and lets violet
Ink my whiteness.
All is blank – like snow plastered
Over shores and sands.
This sky that frames these corners
Is also whitewashed.
A lavish blandness sweeps
These dull motes, perforating the glass.
Each step has to be tapped with precision.
I have new socks on. I leave no rude imprints
As I trespass, gyrating these listening skies,
These frozen sands and fenced shores.
I am cold: this bloodless sliver
Of a moon mocks me with its grim grin.
This should be the correct cosmos,
With its careful motes (silent yet).
I thought I heard a call,
Thrown Back in ripples from those colder corridors,
Rising and roaming, as these oceans spin
Like a careless dreamer. It is clear enough.
But this whiteness is too bright,
Too noisy for me to call back.
Maybe, if I root myself, right here,
The snow might ripen to earth.
Maybe, the motes inscribe a pattern across.
Maybe then, I’ll read my name,
Black or blue.
And then, I can unfold each shore,
And take these wet socks off.
I am tempted
To tear open this envelope,
Sealed with this pale moon.
I am terrified
To understand the meaning
Of my unlettered universe
Resting inside these paper horizons.
The glass might prick my chilblains.
7 April 2007
Must be somewhat heartening to watch shepherd meet Shepherd.”
- Alanis Morisette, Uninvited
These cryptic compass points
That plot the corners of this paper universe,
Confuse me now.
I am to wait
Till a fuller moon, deep in its white,
Ruffles oceans and lets violet
Ink my whiteness.
All is blank – like snow plastered
Over shores and sands.
This sky that frames these corners
Is also whitewashed.
A lavish blandness sweeps
These dull motes, perforating the glass.
Each step has to be tapped with precision.
I have new socks on. I leave no rude imprints
As I trespass, gyrating these listening skies,
These frozen sands and fenced shores.
I am cold: this bloodless sliver
Of a moon mocks me with its grim grin.
This should be the correct cosmos,
With its careful motes (silent yet).
I thought I heard a call,
Thrown Back in ripples from those colder corridors,
Rising and roaming, as these oceans spin
Like a careless dreamer. It is clear enough.
But this whiteness is too bright,
Too noisy for me to call back.
Maybe, if I root myself, right here,
The snow might ripen to earth.
Maybe, the motes inscribe a pattern across.
Maybe then, I’ll read my name,
Black or blue.
And then, I can unfold each shore,
And take these wet socks off.
I am tempted
To tear open this envelope,
Sealed with this pale moon.
I am terrified
To understand the meaning
Of my unlettered universe
Resting inside these paper horizons.
The glass might prick my chilblains.
7 April 2007
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