The Visions of Daquqi (4)

Old Cities, Msyir Mohammed


One of the seven answers, Names, sometimes

the names slip away,

but it is not forgetfulness.

It is our being so absorbed.

Then they all say to me,

Would you lead us in prayer?

Yes. But wait awhile.

I am still in some temporal confusion

that will be solved by companionship with you.

Through companionship with the ground

a grapevine grows. It opens

into the earth's darkness and flies.

It becomes selfless in the presence

of its origin and learns what it really is.

They nod, as though to say, Whenever you are ready.

That nodding was a flame in my heart.

I was freed from hourly time,

from sequence and relation.

The Visions of Daquqi (3)

Lanes, Ahmed Nussaif


The caravans had no food, yet food was dropping

all about them. If someone had said,

Look, over here, they would have thought him insane.

How can this happen. Am I dreaming?

I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit.

I may as well believe.

Then the seven trees become one and then seven again.

At every second they are both one and seven.

Then they are seven men seated in meditation

for the sake of the one reality.

I come close and wave. They call,

O Daquqi, the glory and the crown.

How do they know my name?

They have never seen me until now.

Immediately they know my thought

and smile at each other.

Honored one, is this still hidden from you?

How can anything be hidden from one so dissolved in God?

I think inwardly, If this is the spirit-reality,

how is it we are speaking words and saying names?

The Visions of Daquqi (2)

Kliem of the South, Ahmed Nussaif


What are those candles that no one seems to see?

In the presence of such lights

people were looking for lamps to buy.

Then the seven became one,

in the middle of the sky's rim.

Then that fanned out to seven again.

There were connections between candles

that cannot be said. I saw, but I cannot say.

They became seven men and then seven trees,

so dense with leaves and fruit no limbs were visible.

Flashes of light

spurted from each fruit like juice.

And most marvelous of all was that hundreds

of thousands of people were passing beside the trees,

risking their lives, sacrificing everything,

to find some scrap of shade. No one saw

the trees with their tremendous shade.

The Visions of Daquqi (1)

Husam, tell about the visions of Daquqi,

who said, I have traveled east and west

not knowing which way I was going,

following the moon, lost inside God.

Someone asked, Why do you go barefooted

over the stones and thorns.

What, he answered. What.

A bewildered lover does not walk on feet.

He or she walks on love. There are no "long"

or "short" trips for those. No time.

The body learned from spirit how to travel.

A saint's body moves in the unconditioned way,

though it seems to be in conditionedness.

Daquqi said, One day I was going along

looking to see in people the shining of the Friend.

I came to the shore at twilight and saw

seven candles. I hurried along the beach

toward them. I was amazed. My amazement was amazed.

Waves of bewilderment broke over my head.

Farther and Farther from Zero

Winged Figure, Abbott Handerson Thayer

Suddenly, I fall from the pavillion

into a place where I see the ugliness,

hypocrisy, rouge on a sunken face,

a thorn lodged in a kidney, the blind crone

holding a laurel wreath for the winner,

her black ribbons in shreds,

her eyes dark with purple,

a gold anklet on her shriveled leg.

The puppet show looks charming,

but go behind the screen and see who runs it.

Wash your hands and face of this charade.

Anyone who wants these prizes

flares up quickly like a wood chip.

There is one who can help,

who turns the wheel from nonexistence

to a sweet-breathing emptiness.

Words are ways we add up the breath,

counting stress and syllable

with our exacting musical knack

that takes us farther and farther from zero.

The Price of Kissing

The Kiss, Gustav Klimt

I would love to kiss you.

The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,

What a bargain, let's buy it.

A Night Full of Talking

Landscape, by Fred Williams Lysterfield

A night full of talking that hurts,

my worst held-back secrets. Everything

has to do with loving and not loving.

This night will pass.

Then we have work to do.