Poem by Thal Mohammed
Inspired by Episode 8: Cognitive Tools to Wisdom with John Vervaeke
“Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, Worshipper, lover of leaving
[1]”,
but you can’t heed a summon with
limbs paralyzed, deafened by comfort.
Layers of dullness emulsify the soul,
oily clunks disperse in an abyss and
you, sullen, mistake the dispersal with contentment.
“…even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
come, come again come”
[2]but you just listen by day,
haunted by night: dead words, weaved words,
resurrected words.
Those you love transfigure one by one,
oblivious to a Melody that breaks inside
and lets in a, “certain slant of light”.
[3]
Our tongues, my friend, can re-learn
sacred letters that invoke:
Love – that which no longer
crosses boundaries and lines.
Love – only traverses heights and
renders a primordial being,
beyond distractions,
beyond embellishments,
sheathed in an ancient embrace.
Mute the “admiring bog”
[5]and taste
the whirl of dervishes: upwards it goes,
upwards, infinitely.
Untangle the soul’s labyrinth and
unmask tricksters with empty words,
just like the day you heard the trees’ sway,
when your father’s body was lowered down
because cancerous cells ravaged his brain.
The litany of trees reverberated inside your veins:
you too shall be lowered
you too shall be lowered
We choose our gods: we create some in the morning
and kill some in the evening.
Free worshippers –
Freedom worshippers –
So tell me your fears, my friend, and let us listen:
not to the songs of flat men ravaged by history and
bones that summon blood and spit,
flailing heads in the name of something that is
akin to a primitive darkness –
severed from the Invoked.
Frightened men who want the world to end but,
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the worlds ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”
[6]
[1]Mewlana Jelaludin Rumi
[2]Mewlana Jelaludin Rumi
[3]Emile Dickinson, “There’s a certain slant of light”.
[4]The first letters in the Quran, fragmented. Exegetic scholars debated their meanings for hundreds of years. Why would God invoke letters? Sufi interpretations are numerous, vastly and carry endless secrets.
[5]Emile Dickenson “I am Nobody! Who are you?”.
[6]T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”.
