Now, you can listen to Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore's poems from his own voice. Moore has been writing poetry since 1964. Although he stopped writing for ten years after becoming a Muslim in 1970 he resumed writing poetry in 1980 and has published many books since.
The Miracle Of Pain
With blisters the size of Brazil
and headaches the size of Manhattan -
why is spiritual pursuit so associated with
physical pain?
Abd al-Qadir Jilani used to
tie his hair to a nail on the wall to
snap his head back if he dozed off
reading Qur'an.
Christian mystics endure endless permutations of
difficulty, including spontaneously
bleeding from the
wounds of Christ.
Sitting in Buddhist meditation on puffy black cushions
crosslegged for hours to
focus the mind nearly
drove me up the wall I was facing.
Birth is no picnic. Death often
less so. Life in between: a
tough love event.
Yet it all brings us to God.
These blisters on feet around
Ka'ba marble
around and around,
the headache that comes from
odd short hours of
sleep in order to
wake up the heart before Allah in the
last watches of the night -
the abode of lovers -
is the price to pay for ma'rifa*
as all creatures of this earth must
crack open the shells on acorns or mussels to get
the meat, the
earth splits apart revealing
deep fissures of ruby, whole
generations drown and later generations
come - a
tear of joy forms in the eye of one
who sees The One Who
Sees.
__________________
*ma'rifa = Recognition of the Divine Reality.
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore is a Muslim poet who has published many poetry books and organized poetry reading festivals. Born in 1940 in Oakland, California his first book of poems was published in 1964. He became a Muslim in 1970 and travelled extensively around Europe and North Africa. Although he stopped writing for ten years he continues writing Islamic and spiritual poetry.
