The Eyeless

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Like a blazing sun if Your sun rise not upon I
                                          Lightless, colorless I am
Like a spring shower if Your Light rain not upon I
                                          Lifeless, leafless I am

Searching the shoreless sea of Oneness for shores of ‘Who I am’
Like the broken mast of the derelict vessel of ‘Who I am not’
                                          Masterless, aimless I am

Marching the Self’s untrodden battlefields for victories that never were
Like the David of ‘Who I am’ killing the Goliath of ‘Who I am not’
                                          Resistless, powerless I am

The soaring hawk of ‘Who I am’ hunted by the dove of ‘Who I am not’
Like the lost nightingale of meadows of Your Remembrance
                                          Songless, tongueless I am

Within the crystal orchards of ‘Who I am’ seeds of ‘Who I am not’ vernal
Like the temporal branches of life underneath the shades of Non-being
                                          Flowerless, fruitless I am

And when tripped by my Self falling in love with all other than You
Like a mollusk, Dara cleaves unto the murky seabed of the sea of Love
                                          Sightless, eyeless I am



‘And their hearts absorbed the love of the Calf due to their disbelief’ Qur’an [2:93]

I fell in love with other than You, because I enrobed my Self by the glittering gown of unbelief, again and again, turning my face away from That Illimitable Beauty of Your Everlasting Face. 

And now all that remains an ailing Nafs (Self), half-dead and smoldered, laid moveless betwixt the shards of my shattered heart.

All that which seems distant within the past mere relics fashioned from pain, because they never were, only lies manufactured by my Self, and they shall never be no matter how long I perpetuate lies to my Self.

And the future, incomprehensibly nothing but the anxiety of my Nafs’s (Self’s) last few gasps for certainty, drowning within the torrents of what might be.

All that I loved, and all that broke my heart, stalactites grown within the darkness of Non-being, and ‘I’ a faint echo bouncing back and forth: in love and again in pain. Like a pendulum clock upon the wall of destiny’s hallway leading into oblivion, oscillating between love and loss, measuring the transient time with melancholic precision of a broken heart. And my sighs chime the announcement of another sterile hour that begat nothing.

Until such time when faint echoes of ‘I’ dies off and I fall, as in falling from a mountain to certain death, in love with You, once and for all and forever.

So my Beloved pluck my eyes out or bore deep into both with the shafts of Your Divine Light but leave me not ever to glance upon other than You, and if there is such a cruel moment upon ‘I’, bring to boil that very moment and pour upon my treacherous eyes the beatitude of blindness. (Note: During the Persian ancient times, one punishment for the king’s subjects was boiling liquids poured upon the eyes.)



© 2005-2002,  Dara O. Shayda