The Most Ugly
 

My Lord!
 
Sometimes I look upon my Self
Glooming with sorrow and I say:
“Is there anyone more miserable than my Self?”
 
Sometimes I look upon You  [1]
Blooming with pride and I say:
“Is there anyone more fortunate than my Self?”
 
Sometimes I look deep within my essence
Confessing with shame and I say:
“Is there anyone ever worse than my Self?”
 
However once I obtrude out of my attributes
Wondering upon the Throne and I
With clarity looking down upon my Self!
 
End.
 
 
I am most ugly when my atrocious Self looks upon I, sable for skin and AIDS for destiny. I am the most ugly when billions of blank eyes, turning away rejecting defying a single glance. I am the blasphemy hushed in the temple of Self.
 
This day, my last day, bones hollowed, heart emptied, mind rubbed out, tongue still, relics for legs, mask for face, not a woman nor a man, not alive nor dead… Yes! This day inconspicuously I wear the heavenly refulgent eye-shadow and my eyes nothing of this earth any longer, like divine dolphins diving the depth of the shore-less ocean—wherein all lovers are willingly drowned—"looked upon" I am not by any soul, behold I am not that ailing African.
 
Indiscernibly I and ‘my Self’ annihilated and upon the Sublime Throne no eyes but Beloved’s glance, whereon nonbeing, beaut and I-less looking down finding not that ailing African woman but the Dark Pearl of Paradise glimmering iridescent underneath the lustre of Beloved’s divine eye.
 
Eyes, filled with the darkness of ‘I’ and infected by the disease of Self, behold not the beauty of the Beloved presiding behind the eyes of the lowly African AIDS victim.



[1] 'You' refers to the Creator.




Background: Dying AIDS patient in Africa, tell me WHAT her eyes are stunned looking at?


© 2004-2002,  Dara Shayda