At The End of Her Gaze
My Lord!
If I have a portion of this
world
Shall give it all away to
strangers
And if I have something
reserved in hereafter
Shall give it all away to
believers
As for I in this world
Your remembrance suffices
As for I in the world after
Your mere one glace suffices
This world and the one after
Two slight and worthless
pleasures
And true priceless treasure
The endowment of beholding
Your Face
End.
Upon her dusty shins the quill
of affliction scribbled
words that though her lips parched with oppression unable to utter,
however mine
eyes read the glimpse of that resplendent epithet upon her skin’s
afflatus.
She wants not anything of this
world, the insane murderer
that slaughtered her parents. What could she ask from it? How could she
accept
anything from it? Thus gives it all away—A slave-child’s labor of
purest
love—with no anticipation of any return. Because where AIDS and abject
poverty
roam within her darkness, the word ‘return’ has been stricken from the
humanity’s corpus forever.
And we wantonly go to the
mosque, church or synagogue
foaming with lying yelps upon the sacred pages of holy books, looking
the other
way worshiping festal the god of amnesia. Abased consequently she looks
the
other way, away from the land of milk and honey bequeathing all for us
the
guile believers!
Follow her gaze since at the
end you shall find the object
of every desire, the love in every heart and the sanctuary for the
forsaken,
the Beloved that heavens and earth with un-ceased devotion rushing
towards
inescapably fallen in love…
Background:
Child labor in Haiti. Photo by
Judith Farber
© 2004-2002,
Dara Shayda
Calligraphy by Kia-ee
