Читать книгу Splitting the Moon - Joel Hayward - Страница 9

The Voyage of a Scholar

On the day that paper clips and files

And memos snowed upon a city

I opened an unfamiliar book

To see what had brought that storm

Each night I brushed back dreams

By turning pages of profundity

To learn what had placed death

In the eyes of passport photos

The heavens opened for

Forty days within my mind and

Soul in a Noah’s flood of

Confusing certainties

The willing dead were absent in

Every word but my forty days

Left greater questions buoyant

And curiosity unvanquished

I sailed twenty times

In seven years through

Surah seas of calm swells

Pushed by winds of conscience

Twenty times I charted their

Depths – truly Pacific –

Before I knew that I

Knew nothing

When tranquil winds lifted

La ilaha illallah I heard a soft Muhammadur Rasulullah Slip without thought from my lips

A book read twenty times asked

When I would embrace its truth

And in a small stillness I replied

Now oh Lord, Now