The trees watch in silence
The sluggish night that falls on my heart.
The red tint of sadness in the air
Says the “thief” is loose in the neighborhood
I Wonder if the moments of longing
Would find their way back after dark
The chapter I will teach tomorrow says:
“The souls are mere aspects
Of the breath of the merciful.
All separate things are God knowing himself!”
I close my eyelids tight
And press hard to picture
Ibn al-Arabi as he says such unheard things
in Cordoba, Damascus, or some other giantland!
Instead I see
My anxious, undergrad/believer in the first row
Who will, no doubt, protest:
“But how can evil be God?
“How can anyone think that?”
I search for a proper way
To handle his anxious feelings
Ibn al-Arabi whispers from the next page
With a smile on the face I have lent him:
“The knowledge that He is All in all
Should have the same fire
The same transport and rapture
As the joining of two lovers.”
I am getting out of the car
In front of Elizabeth’s house
To be the Royal princess from the far-off lands!
Presiding over a poetry competition
The melting dark is a noisy river
Ibn al-Arabi laughs out loud in Damascus
I feel light as a bubble flowing with the night.
September 26, 2000, St. Louis