The Thirst

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For so many years and for so many sorrows, like a bedouin—part man part thirst—traversed  so many deserts and now in his presence and his present lays the weltering sea where all desires are quenched. And though his complaining lips parched, this bedouin’s hands refuse to stretch into the waters:


Our restless voyage began with You and unquenchable was
                                                  Your thirst
As much as we suffered, all there was the timeless pleasure of
                                                  Your thirst
 
While you searched the sands of a thousand stars dune after dune
From one end of the universe to the other and endeavoured nothing save
                                                  Your thirst

Sometimes a derelict Sufi chanting: Subhāna-Hū and some other times
A marooned astronaut hailing S.O.S into the vast expanding cosmos of
                                                  Your thirst
 
And while you were dissolving within the whirlpool of the ‘Present’
Dara’s trembling hands cried: In these vexed waters all is lost save
                                                  Your thirst


This bedouin backs off the sea, leaving ‘you’ & ‘I’ behind, for now he is no longer a man but a creature fashioned from thirst, no longer remembers anything but a prolonged feeling of insatiable thirst. Fortunately within this desert he can be as thirsty as he can since in this cosmos all that counts is: How thirsty you are!


Note: ‘you’ with lowercase ‘y’ is a human-you, someone mortal you loved, and ‘You’ with uppercase ‘Y’ signifies Allah.





© 2005-2002,  Dara O. Shayda