Bahá’í World/Volume 16/Verse

The Bahá’í World
Volume 16

H

VERSE

Le Báb ou le premier jour1

Je dormais d’un profond sommeil Quand résonnerent les trompettes Qui annoncaient dans la tempéte Le premier jour de i’ére nouvelle.

Réveillé, je fus dans la crainte D’entendre les cris et les plaintes, Des morts et des agonisants Balayés d’un souffle puissant.

Emporté par ce tourbillon

Je vis que je n’étais point seul Et que les morts, les agonisants, Revivaient d’un nouveau sang;

Du sang de celui qui otfrit Sa beauté, sa jeunesse Pour réaliser la promesse Que Dieu, un jour nous fit.

M i Lafaille (Belgium)

IReprinted from La Pensée Bu/ni’ie.

Le Cristal d’Amourl

Désir particulier tu es sacré Insaisissable comme les poliens de la pensée Comme glisse la vie sur un miroir

Désir tu as au coeur 01‘1 tu resides dans la splendeur

Je veux crier ton Noml

Depuis que tu m’as e'veillée Au souflie puissant de la Foi, Je me suis abandonnée

Au charme si doux de ta voix. Sur l’océan de ta parole

Je marche d’un pas tranquille, Enfilant au long des jours

Les perles de ton amour;

J’en ferai une parure,

Pour que tu me reconnaisses Au grand jour de la promesse, Car je veux crier ton nom: Bahá’u’llz’ih, O Bahá’u’lláh.

A tous ceux qui dans le monde Le coeur vide et pur attendent Celui qui saura les aimer.

Ta force a change mon coeur, Et je sais que lc bonheur

Est de vivre 2‘1 165 cétés

En faisant ta volonté.

Sur le chemin que tu traces,

Je m’engage et prends 1a place Que tu veux bien me dormer. Sois mon guide et donne-moi, L’ardeur, l’amour et la foi

Qui me conduiront vers toi.

E1 quand viendra la rencontre, Aie pitié de ma faiblcsse Prends ma main et souviens-toi Que je veux crier ton nom: Bahá’u’lláh, O Bahá'u’lláh

A tous ceux qui 2‘1 la ronde,

Le coeur vide et pur attendent, Le plus grand amour du monde.

M . Lafaille (Belgium)

Comme une perle dans une huitre en moire ‘Reprimed from L” Pe’h‘ée Bahá’í“

Désir tu es sauveur

Ma meditation sans toi, oh malheur De rctour au jour

Répandrait mille pleurs

To a Pioneer Dead

Si dans ce voyage d’amour Say this of her: That she was a petal

Tu n’étais apparu Blown from ecstasy to ecstasy,

Lointain éclat, splendide et pur From grave to grave.

Cristal gemme Say: She has known many deaths. Not this final closing of the eyes

Désir tu as mystére dans un for intérieur In release or pain,

Reflet du secret dans une pyramide d’or BL“ the in-between-deaths

Pour parler de toi, tu vois, j‘écris tout bas. That are the greatest agonies.

Annie-Joélle Hurvy (France)

1Reprinted from La Pensée Balm'iy.

687

Say, also, that her resurrections were glorious And flamed like poinsettias in the noonday sun.

Olive V. Applegate (United States)

[Page 688]688

So steige immer zu!

Und wolltest du auch fern den Hohn verweilen in den Girten schon,

du fiindest keine Ruh.

Drum steige immer zu!

Und bleibe immer du!

Denn was auch links und rechts dir winkt und lockt und lichelt, singt und blinkt. ach, das verweht im Nu.

Drum bleibe immer du!

Und steige immer zu!

Und geht es hart, so 5011 es sein, denn dieser Weg ist dein allein und du allein bist du.

So steige immer zu!

Adelber! M [Ihlschlege/ (Germany)

Dez'n Auge ist mein Vertrauen. Bahá’u’lláh

Es ist wahr,

daB Dunkelheit Dein Auge tréige machte,

wie es wahr ist,

daB Du die Dunkelheit verschuldet hast.

Eher zogernd versuchtest Du in die Sonne zu blicken und warst doch sofort geblendet.

Du begannst von vorne, blicktest um Dich und aus dem Schleier kamen zuerst nur Farben.

Bald waren da F ormen, erst Gréiser, Fame, spiter Tiere und eben beginnst Du den Menschen zu sehen.

Es ist wahr,

daB Du die Sonne suehen muBt,

wie es wahr ist,

daB sie zu hell ist‘

Gerald Jatzek (Germany)

Riḍván

Enrobed in lilies’ virgin bloom, Spring rises over winter’s gloom; Perfumed in fruitful blossoming, Oh! Listen to Him sing:

THE Bahá’í WORLD

‘Riḍván! Riḍván! I rise aflame,

and comb your soul with Heaven’s Name. I give you voice: Arise, proclaim,

Lay bare the Gem‘s prophetic claim.’

Shafiq Fathea'zam (United States)

Loose My Soul

Bleak wind, blow through me Loose my soul

Carry to the depths of the world My restless soul.

In the cold, careless company

Of the wind

To flee the wearisome worries of the world Liefs my soul.

Pure wind, flurry me

Across the ocean

Hurry in fitful motion through the world My yearning soul.

Hasten by the wastes of Indy

Listless wind

Nor tarry in places lush and favoured of the world

Wind of my soul.

The moving wind alone can still me Quiet the fevered harry

Desires and passions of the world Leash on my soul.

But if there some still centre be

Release my soul

F rec in the unrecked reaches of the world My lovely soul.

To which the wind: ‘Hear thee I move but as my Lord commandeth me.

If thou wouldst escape all sorrows of the world

Yield Him thy soul.

‘For fly through the immensity

Of space through all eternity

Yet shouldst thou find thyself in every world A restless soul.

‘But lose thyself in ecstasy

Oflove for Him

Enfree in every one of His fair worlds Thy raptured soul.’

Wind of God, blow through me,

Loose my soul,

Carry to the heights of Thy eternal world My yearning soul.

Geoffrey Nash (United Kingdom)

[Page 689]VERSE 689

Mi Plegaria

Scfior: Yo quiero ofrecerte todo lo mz’is bello de la creacién, aunque todo es Tuyo; pero con mi anhelo formaré una preciosa alfombra tejida de todas Tus maravillas, para que Te recrees y poses Tus pies inmateriales . . . Y asi‘ tomaré e1 rocio de 111 mafiana. e] aroma de las flores, el canto de los pz’tjaros, e] sonreir de las estrellas,

la espuma blanquisima de los mares a1 despertar de la aurora y el beso de la tarde junto con la sonrisa de un nifio . . .

éQué més puedo ofrecerte? El corazén de los hombres, ino! . . . porque este siglo todo lo ha infectado y bullen todas las pasiones, imperando la crueldad . . .

Sefior: haz que Tu rayo divino disipe todas las tristezas y desaparezca esta noche en que yace el mundo . . .

Sefior: vuelve Tus ojos a esta estrella pequefiita, que en este periodo de transicién se esté despedazando por falta de Unién, Paz y Amor.

Y que la antorcha que encendié de nuevo Bahá’u’lláh sea el faro que ilumine el mundo y ante su luz se olviden los rencores, se desprecien

las riquezas y las ambiciones. para que todos vivamos en perfecta armonia libres de Miseria, Temor, y de todos los prejuicios que

separan a la humanidad, y que todo el mundo sea pronto un solo hogar.

TL'I eres el Sublime, e! Poderoso, el Grande ioh mi Dios! Blanca V. Mejial (Nicaragua)

1See ‘In Memoriam’. p. 550.

A Metropolis of Owls

. . . I I was not the Black Dungeon of Tihrt'm, far all its horrors and chains, which He (Bahá’u’lláh) named the Most Great Prison. He gave that name to ‘Akká. . . Not He Himselfalone but the Cause ofGad was in prison. George Townshend

Named by her past suitors ‘Akká, Ptolemais, St. Jean d’Acre,

she is no beauty, this aged courtesan, meanly rouged by sun, squalidly abandoned to beg her bread

with perversely tasteless baubles and tawdry bits of tarnished brass, her historically frequented bed

the nest of roach and rodent.

The moon’s cosmetic kindness does not erase

the horror—hollowed haggardness of her pocked, stone face.

The enthusiastic stars fail to cajole

nor can the soaring birdsong raise in her joyless breast

an answering trill.

The wafting apotropaic perfume of the Bahjí rose, seeking to condole, pleads for entry at her unrelenting gate, but is turned back,

its forgiveness spent among children playing on Napoleon’s Hill.

With disconsolate dusk the carnival of her bazaar subsides

leaving her in darkness, with no warming fire,

leaning toward the water’s edge where the mortified day will expire. Low-squatting, knees clasped to her thin unsuccouring chest,

she does not raise her bat-encircled head

at the hawk’s cry,

nor heed the querulous questions of the owl.

The pale paste jewel of her lighthouse beckons wanly

but the senile, impotent mosque can only lewdly smile.

[Page 690]690

THE BAHA’I WORLD

She does not see the stricken night huddling comfortlessly by her garment’s soiled, unfastened hem nor hear her own demented keening echoed in the lamenting surt‘s low moan, much less gaze adoringly at Carmel entreating greenly from across the bay. Indifferent to the lascivious mist obscenely fingering her lank hair her stare is inward, fixed upon her private stunning grief, turned from the world, consumed beyond self-pity or contrition. She knows the moment when she chose her death, knows it. lives it nightly as the murmurous sin-whispering waves pile in. forty upon forty. restless with accusation]: ~the Cargo of cargoes ignominiously spewed ashore; athe metallic futile protest of the rusted chain; ithe thickening indignation of the sordid, misled mob; —the unwilling lock-key turning in a prison cell; ithe infamous farmén piously read—she knows it well, the parchment crackling wildly in her reeling brain; ithe shattered skylight and the frail youth’s twisted frame; ithe mother’s sob; and then, and then, Oh then, unbearably, the scratching of a Pen!

The dawn releases her to trinkets, plastic wares, the haggling of housewives, and leering merchants’ trivial affairs.

She rises shivering, and disfiguring her face,

rehearses a grotesque. coquettish smile

for her reeking market-place;

but leaving, looks back to where the denunciatory waves recedc, her unspeakable, lip-locked, bosom-buried crime

(till their eve’s retelling)

a secret aqueously kept:

To have seen the loneliness of God

and not have wept!

Roger White

Pas de Deux for the Divided Self

Take the cup of the Testament in thy hands ,' leap um! (lance with ecstasy in the triumphal procession ofllzc C ovenant.’ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Had the King decreed my head upon the spear or bade me thrust my breast against the lance! So sweet a death, the martyr‘s circumstance. asked not of me, His enemies I fear

not, nor a crimson end, life not so dear

I’d not haste to die and thereby win His glance. Another madness summons me. I dance

to music I but faintly, dimly hear

and, dancing, slay my dearest, closest one; with every breath affirm this cruellest vow.

Let lute and drum and cymbal sound, that none hear my weeping at this private death. How long the dance! Faltering, I leap and run:

Do you weary yet, love? Do you tire now?

Roger White

[Page 691]VERSE

691

The Dedication at Rabbit Creek (of the National Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds of the Bahá’ís of Alaska)

i

The name of our Lord

Is as the sun in summer.

On light mornings with wings like razors A rustle of gulls strikes the air.

The thin blood rises like smoke.

The cold beneath the river

Had darkened the water. The creek

Had eaten snow all day and gone black. It glistened like glazed steel, strong, bent, Lifted me seaward. The name of our Lord Is as the sun in summer.

At the terminal’s edge ice weighted the last buttereup.

Summer said to winter: behold, I have waited all autumn to bring you This five golden—petaled memento.

Already stretchered aboard the plane

The crushed and broken fisherman

Waited his pain. In the air

I glimpsed the coast of the island

Struck by the first cold and bordered with fierce lace, The flight was at night over water.

The full plane told me nothing.

ii

Lift if it can Be lifted the heart weighted With fear, the man Shriveled to dust who was fated For glory. Lift him Or his brother who never surrendered Yet dropped in defeat, Who suffered the ordinary Dimness and saw clearly only The void in his purpose.

Wed us, Muse, apothecary, enchantress, To something.

‘Teach !’ she said and called it ‘Love.’ ‘Teachl’ she said and spoke of ‘Praise.’

She said to us, ‘Teach !’ and wrote ‘Protect.’ She said to us, ‘Teach!’

How did we ever arrive

F orgetful of ourselves,

Together intent only on those four walls, A roof, a door carved with fire,

A house grounded in glory.

All in it are lifted toward Heaven.

iii

The corners of this house are in Klukwan, Ft. Yukon, Bethel, Akutan.

The roof leans over Hydaburg,

And tips the ragged sea at Diomede. Carpets are green islands in this house That has for windows glacial waterfalls, And hallways where wide rivers go; Rooms dense as forests, deep as coasts; Light echoes from both sun and moon.

We cannot praise, we cannot,

Cannot dedicate, how celebrate?

This building is a corner of the earth.

No celebration can exalt its birth,

This Sacred Fold, this shelter from the wind, Beyond the first expression of His mind:

‘Exalt your effort and magnify your aims.’

Forever may He bless

This house without address And bless its servants each Who love, protect, praise, teach.

Ray Hudson (Alaska)

Dawn-Breaker1

Ablaze with candles sconeed in weeping eyes

of wounds,

He danced through jeering streets to death; oh sang

against

The drumming mockery God’s praise. Flames nested in

his flesh

Fed the fires that consume us now, the fire that

will save.

Robert Hayden (United States)

[Page 692]692

THE Bahá’í WORLD

Poems by Bernard Leach

Yin, Yang1

Yin, Yang.

Day and night,

Sun and moon,

Land and sea,

Me and the not me. Perhaps the Lord

His work to see Smiles in eternity. But here and now

We laugh and cry Torn between duality. Oh God!

To find the meeting place Once more

In Thee.

Transmutationl

When by sin

I am furthest

From my Lord

He is nearest me,

His feet so close behind. Thus, by contrast, Does He know Himself. Can there be light Without a shade

In this our world?

He made us

‘In His Own likeness’

It is written,

Hence direct knowing, A click of certitude Which states

‘I know that I know’.

It shouts in the shell

Of my ear,

It is silent

In the heart

Of a stone,

It bleats;

Not the lamb,

Nor yet the ewe.

But that which is the Whole ‘1 am’.

Empty and Full

The time shall come When there shall be No Thee or me,

But only Thee; Utterly to be empty Of myself

Filled to the very brim By Thee.

'From Drawings, Verse and Belief, Adams and Dart, 1A Queen Square, Bath, Somerset, Reprinted by permission.

Totality

He, in His totality, sees me

And I with His borrowed eyes see Him

He in His utter freedom gave this tentacle the choice

To turn away,

As I so often do.

Yet at that worst moment

He, with tenderest hand withheld,

Awaits my free return,

So loath am I

To find Him

With my inmost will.

A Potter’s Cry

Oh God, that Thy heart-beat may be my heart-beat, informing my hands.

On the Martyrdom of the Bétb2

They killed you once

with wood and nails,

hammers in place of swords,

the tools of your trade;

you hung heavily upon the branches of the tree of life, wood and nails

could not support both God and man; only a handful of enemies,

two thieves,

and a few friends

stood by

to witness your agony

while it lasted,

to hear the final cry

that split the Temple veil

and raised the dead.

This time

a thousand rifles filled the air with smoke and, as it cleared,

the dust that filled ten thousand watching eyes covered the sun in shadow

as it hung, heavy and dim with blood upon a sky

that was to know Hiroshima.

Denis Machin (United Kingdom)

ZReprinted from United Kingdom Bahá’í Journal.

[Page 693]The Time of Turmoil1

Yes, I remember certain things . . . I mean, that dreadful storm

That swept so suddenly across Tabríz

The whirlwinds seemed to come From everywhere at once Stinging the eyes and skin

No one was able to escape

It caused so much turmoil

The sky, you see, completely dark From midday on, with quakes Such trembling of the earth And all the buildings shaking Damaging the wells

We found no water fit to drink.

We left Tabríz a few days after that Before the pestilence

Although my wife was ill

And died of cholera on the way Our younger children crying Unable to buy food, starving

And sleeping in the fields.

Yes, it was a fearful time

With distraught people searching . . .

I wondered at the time What have we done To bring all this about.

You know, I did not see The act take place I thought it best to stay at home

So many angry people in the streets

I heard it from my eldest son Who stood among the crowds Along the barrack roof

He said they took the two of them The one they called the Báb And with His friend Suspended them by ropes Beside the square

And fired shots until

Their bodies mingled into one, Then dragged them both Through dusty streets

To leave them on the moat Outside the city walls.

My eldest boy

He followed them a way

It was so dark by then

The clouds of red and yellow dust Hiding the noonday sun

He could not see a thing And so returned to home. My wife was much upset

By things that he described It was as if she sympathized With what the Babis taught.

VERSE 693

I never learned to read Never really thought

If what they did was wrong I live alone here

In this empty place

My children gone

My eldest son teaching

In a foreign post.

I pray, of course,

Five times a day

And find but little peace Among these barren hills, Keeping a few goats.

And now you come to me And mention many things Speak of a winter’s end

An Age of Spring, and these I barely understand, Forever talking of a Newer Day Just like'my eldest son.

It’s made me wonder nowThe persecutions still go on, I think—can it be true

We killed a Messenger of God!

Larry Rowdan (Canada)

1The martyrdom of the Báb and His companion, Mirzá Muhammad-‘AIi-i-Zunuzi, 9 July 1850. See Gad Passes By, pp. 49760.

The Pilgrimage2

This one bruised, was not immune, coughed, caught cold, Bought, sold, loved and forgot love; unable to find Anything worth discomfort he grew rich and 01d.

Beauty assaulted his indifferent mind,

Broke open his soul, tossed all his comfort out.

Now old, in love and foolish, he destroyed his eyes. Only the young give up their eyes for love.

He crossed ‘Iráq. His heart kept in disguise

His heart brightened in that blinding sun.

He stood before the Prison of his Lord.

And stood before salt-scalded sea walls, Barred from light—Look there! Look there!# 0 unable to pass into prison,

Unable to glimpse—There! At that windowli The gloveless hand waving him home.

Ray Hudson (A laska)

3 The pilgrimage osttéd Isma‘il-i-Kasiii. See GndPasses By, pp. 187—188.

[Page 694]694 THE BAHA’l WORLD The Pioneer

— for all the lovely ladies Ye are . . . the soft-flowing waters upon which must depend the very life of all men . . . the breezes ofspring that are waftedover the world . . . Through you the countenance Of the worldhath been wreathea’ in smiles, and the brightness of H is light shone forth. Baha’u’llah

1 You will meet her anywhere, the river, market, roadside, bus, in Carcross, Nairobi, Liverpool, Duluth, and the old girl will be smiling: she knows. The sincere costume, the workworn hands, say little. Satin or leather, the good, earnest face belongs on a chocolate box, affirms, could endorse nutritional causes on billboards or in glossy magazines; but she has far greater power than Westinghouse or General Mills. I warn you, she is dangerous. In her bag there is a weapon more potent than a gun. If her lips move noiselessly she is not litanizing her grievances nor reading subway signs. She carries more than recipes in her head. ii It is fatal to speak to her, no comment so mundane she cannot bend it to her own design. Chance a remark about the weather and she may tell you of The Tempest, leave you re-examining the roots of social unrest and worrying about the fate of the House of Hapsburg. She is not dismayed by headlines, calls them as her witness, carries answers like neat balls of coloured yarn, familiarly handled, spun of truth. The mysteries are few and she lives with them companionably, sibyl or saint, mystic or madwoman, in ready-made dress and sensible shoes. iii She has faced it, reconciled it all, the whole human struggle, the journey from the cave, the love and the ashes, the song and the blood, the suffering, the stillborn, the greed; ordered, forgiven, reconciled it all, Her compassion spans eras and epochs, finds room for Luther King, Lenin, Lao-tse, all our lost leaders, sorted, accommodated like the memory of good or wayward children she has known; finds room for the Aztec, Ibo, Tlingit, Vietnamese, she might be one of them. Fashions in indignation puzzle her. It did not come as news that black is beautiful (may be herself black); knows Eskimos (or is one); calls the Kalahari Bushmen brothers;

[Page 695]VERSE 695

counts the Maoris as friends; would have shielded the hapless of Nagasaki, Warsaw, Buchenwald, with her own body, if she could. Long ago she wept and worked for causes not then named, knows symptom from disease and is not resigned to evil.

iv No, you do not imagine her authority; dynasties might dissolve before it or her concern melt mountains. She is dangerous; she cannot be dismissed. Your eloquent despair does not dissuade her: ‘The future is inestimably glorious, and when one considers the life to come . . .’ You will want to hurt her, destroy her dream, but her words hang like heavy golden pears and she knows your hunger. Even as you strike she heals you and in so doing heals herself. You may crush her but she will not die; she yields like grass and is as indestructible. She knows what you defend; many times a midwife, she understands rebirth. Your credentials don‘t impress her; she tinkers with souls.

V Do not accept the invitation to her home to meet her friend from Adelaide, Ṭihrán, Kaduna; they are conspirators and drink from the same well. Her own certitude is baked into the cakes she serves with tea tasting of her own contentment that leaves you crazed, thirsting forever for assurance. Be warned, she is dangerous.

v1 The moment is selected. You will not see all heaven’s angels, all ancient good, the very weight of history rush to her support as she gathers breath (her smile never more gentle)‘Have you heard the Message of Baha’u’llah?’nor will you know that God Himself throughout all worlds gives ear to your reply.

I tell you, she is dangerous. Roger White

[Page 696]696 THE Bahá’í WORLD

Le Balle! Shayda, a dance compahrformed in the period [97371974, is based in Oitawa, C anada. The troupe’s many perfornmnces, including presentations of dances with Bahá’í—inspired themes, before [1' ve audiences and on television, ha ve provided considerable publicityfor rhe Faith.