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II
VERSE
THIS IS FAITH
To walk Where there is no path To breathe Where there is no air To see Where there is no light This is Faith.
To cry out in the silence,
The silence of the night,
And hearing me echo believe And believe again and again —This is Faith.
To hold pebbles and see jewels To raise sticks and see forests To smile With weeping eyes —This is Faith.
To say: “God, I believe” When others deny, “I hear” When there is no answer,
“I see” though naught is seen This is Faith.
And the fierce love in the heart, The savage love that cries
Hidden Thou art yet there!
Veil Thy face and mute Thy tongue Yet I see and hear Thee, Love, Beat me down to the bare earth, Yet I rise and love Thee, Love! This is Faith.
—-Rtihz'yyih (Israel) (Amatu ’l—Ba/ufi Rlilibyilz [@émzm)
THE VISIT
“That Church no di exist for here again,”
that old woman said,
pointing a bony finger at the abandoned Haziratu’I-Quds
now overgrown With grass and sadly derelict
like an old man Who has neglected his beard.
Rumours of Witchcraft had frightened the Villagers away.
We knew What we must do:
Summon the hosts of Abhá to action, and
With machets shaip and lean,
conquer the Witchcraft and the grass.
Soon the green tufts were cleared from the roof,
the path was made smooth,
the interior straightened and ordered.
We gathered some children,
taught them songs and prayers.
By evening, word had spread, the children carrying the news of our meeting to their families.
Sixteen Bahá’ís came
and two women inquirers.
The fmit of the meeting was the resolution never to neglect again
the “church of Bahá” the center Where all may come
in peace and unity.
—-Samuel T anyi-T ambe (Cameroon Republic)
LITERARY AND MUSICAL WORKS 1171
LIVING
On flax—clad hill 1 lie watching the sun set colours so thickI should wrap them round me; keep out the evening chill.
Increase my wonder and amazement at T hee, O God
My children come to me. Running.
Sharky smiles on grubby little faces.
Instant action response to this energy;
life
Increase my wonder and amazement at T hee, O God
Smooth profiles woman of candle-glow
curved in devotion. Breathing sculpture. Timeless.
Her beauty gladdens
my heart.
Increase my wonder and amazement at T Izee, O God
I hear of a man.
One man.
One
man
whose life is changing the world
changing me.
He was real, no myth. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
Increase my wonder and amazement at T hee, O God
—.-Fay Sweetman (New Zealand)
TOGETHER
At last we are one, at last we are grafted together,
You the outspread wing and I the feather.
We are the sail and the mast
We are the wind and the weather;
We are the song birds sing. ..
And the honey drawn from the heather.
We are one! We are parting and meeting, Voice. . .and the echo replying.
We are farewelling and greeting,
Living. . .and dying.
We are one. . .the known and unknowing, The wild wind blowing each to the other. At last, at last we are one,
At last we are grafted together,
You. . .the outspread wing
and I. . .the feather.
—-—Kate March (Australia)
Bahá’u’lláh is the Prophet of God ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is His son,
and They both shine under the sun. They are a good two
because They gave away Their cloth and shoesand that is the poem of Bahá’u’lláh and His son.
—Geoffrey Cameroon (Canada) (Age 8)
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PROMISE FULFILLED
With lucent newsong,
dawn breaks.
With springsong and madrigals, flowering rosetrees and nightingales trifling,
dawn breaks.
With a sun of hope,
day is born.
Lightening shadows, greening deserts,
uniting peoples and races, defeating prejudices,
day comes surging.
With two morning stars,
dawn comes now,
With a chorus of cocks
sudden and sharp,
and with a song of lights and flowers, a cry of great love,
and hope for a new day. ..
Oh Best Beloved!
Oh Living Faith!
Of Glory of Glories!
Oh Promise Fulfilled!
No one can stop You.
You come, breaking the dawn. You come, bearing day.
With seven hundred fifty rifles, they would darken the day.
Oh, Your weeping, Your pain. Streams of blood
irrigate Your holy earth;
roses and lost stars
bring in the dawn.
—J0se Gre (Chile) ( T ranslation by Janet Ruhe—Schoen, Jaleh Ruhe, Emil Groth)
THE Bahá’í WORLD
THE DANCE
(Dedicated to the Pygmy people of Mugambiro, Zaire, who tried to teach me the reality ofJoy)
0 star catchers, O forest dancers, your heads only reach my breasts, but your Vision takes in the universe. Your laughter
echos in my head, your joy is a suspended crystal reflecting light. You give me a new name, Kahinda, the one
Who rouses the people to move. You teach me to see in the dark, you teach me to move to the rhythm of
my heart, by moonlight.
~Kathleen LeMone (United States)
I am a rose, single and alonebut I know the Wind.
———Kateya Robbie (Canada) (Age 9)
LITERARY AND MUSICAL WORKS l 173
EVERYTHING 18 OF GOD
They are of God all the Virtues the merits the most luminous gems the arcane knowledge
They are of God all future good ' life and death
time
poetry
the hand and the pen
the Intellect and the heart all that is searched for in the night and is lost among the stars of the sky
11 FROM INFINITE DISTANCES
The Well-B eloved was calling me the Nightingale of the prison of ‘Akká the Exile Whom even the guards venerated with sympathetic smiles of understanding and I heard His voice intoning an irresistible song I was caught by a lasso one time and forever like a weary eagle after a crazy race of a dozing donkey
‘ III BAHA’U’LLAH IN A DREAM
The eyes hard, sharpened diamonds of indefinable steel penetrated the dream sweet-light as fragrant bread that the baker has just removed from the oven You came at dawn the day of my years and You toasted with crystalline springwater that quenches every thirst from every throat In the torment of contorted thoughts in the nucleus of a swooning soul I was devastated mutely cringing on the bed among a festive gathering of tender, unknown friends
The dawn filtering through the window found me astonished and Without voice The room tasted of mint and of poetry
(Selected stanzas from “The March of Utopia ”) —Daniele Giancane (Italy)
( T ranslations by Iskander T into and Elizabeth Peedo)
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NOTES POSTMARKED THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD
B egin n ing Arrival
The plane touches down at Ben Gurion.
Like a latter-day Noah he is disgorged
to move groggily through humid air,
the smell of warm tarmac
and the hum of Levantine confusion.
Everywhere, the seduction of orange blossoms.
The luggage he struggles with
bulges With untried convictions,
rusted resolve and unrelinquished disappointments.
He has brought more clothing
than he Will have time to wear.
Hope, his best provision,
is crammed in among random indiscretions,
outworn hesitancies and inappropriate tweeds.
Had he not guessed this venture calls for
the lightweight wardrobe of beginnings?
The journey has taken longer
than the airline’s tidy prediction.
The passenger has known false starts, obscure delays and ill—judged detours but feels he has at last
attained the suburbs of authentic arrival.
Outside the airport, as he hails a cab, Israel opens itself to him
offers its noise, Vitality and curiously familiar foreignness, presents the gift of palpable certainty that this is a holy land.
Alone, he offers a small prayer
through fatigue—numbed lips,
surrenders his weariness and j etlag
t0 the Tel Aviv hotel bed
and, mumbling like a drowsy child,
T omorrow, Haifa and the Mountain of God, falls into a welcoming chasm
of restorative sleep.
THE Bahá’í WORLD
Beyond his window confident stars form new configurations, effortlessly shaping themselves into the alphabet of homecoming.
D a y 0 n 6 Visit to the Shrine of the Báb
The first glimpse brings assurance,
like learning that the Alps
resemble the postcards, and a sense
of fannliarity, Of longstanding personal ownership.
Mingling at Pilgrim House he finds himself
lightheaded With happiness and anticipation,
his hopes fleshed, his expectations peopled.
A sense of belonging invades him, causes
the others to seem like family.
He recognizes even the furniture as that of home.
The luxury of saying Alláh—u—Abhd
cloistered from offence or ridicule,
the immediate acceptance, are as he has dreamed,
a minor private confirmation.
The Visit to the Shrine takes place in an easy but awesome silence. The crunching of tile shards underfoot as he moves in file With the others towards the goal helps anchor him to his purpose from Which he might be pulled by exquisite details of the garden or even the unself—conscious trill of a bird that clothes in song his mounting ecstasy. His senses collude With the beauty t0 delay his pace and postpone the rewarding confrontation. But then he is there With the otherstoo soon and far from soon enoughfland the door, giant—tall and heavy and swung on its hinges, extends its irresistible invitation. Attar of roses becomes his oxygen. The pattern in the carpet provides
LITERARY AND MUSICAL WORKS
occupation to his insatiable eyes
till he raises them to see the petal—strewn threshold
and, beyond, the inner chamber screened by golden mesh.
Are the prayers offered here invested with
a special potency? he wonders, but his words
seem impertinent in this setting and
leave no imprint on his mind.
He blushes, concerned that he might have spoken aloud,
and cannot tell,
so articulate is this silence, so resonant
of all the anguish deposited there.
He hears a fellow pilgrim weep
and longs to have his own heart break
or conflagrate that he might rush forward,
ashes dribbling from his cupped hands,
to scatter them upon the threshold.
A scornful voice in his head causes him to squirm
in discomfort, but shrugging it away
he finds it possible to recite prayers
and then he slowly takes his leave
wondering what he may have left on the threshold
where the petals gave their lives.
As day expires he reflects on the Báb’s captivity, tums to his journal, writes:
“He Who had no candle
has here, ensconced in circled circle, amid adoring flowers
and green deferential trees,
this whitest marble taper
tipped with gold.
It gleams serenely from Carmel, inextinguishably lights the world, our reverential hearts
the willing wick.
“This light will melt remotest snows, outlast the names
by which we know it.
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“See, Azerbaijan, this constant flame which casts no shadow.”
And then he sleeps.
In a troubling dream he sees the face of the girl
whom he had hoped long ago to companion on pilgrimage
(when such excursion was but a phantasmal impulse)
but whom he had driven away
through his awkward and immature insistence
that shewpuzzled and ill preparedwear the cloak of his Vision
though her spirit drew her elsewhere.
He remembers their last despairing conversation,
a classic pas de deux of misunderstanding,
the telephone receiver heavy in his hand,
his head throbbing, his voice clotted With hurt,
the long imponderable silences
thick with unspoken accusations.
He had imposed on her blindly his singular need
to feel he was her rescuer,
oblivious to the mystery of her own integrity,
her private and necessary rebellion, the personal choices
through which she found protection and fulfillment
and, eventually, the contented life
he could never have afforded her.
In the dream he sees a sooty congregation crows he supposeswarranged high overhead
along a telephone wire, their light-struck feathers
glinting with vague menace.
He awakens with a start from his broken rest,
greets his mirrored reflection raw—eyed and iuefully,
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thinking: One brings one’s past on pilgrimage and what? Does one leave it here unassimilated, tangled
and opaque, or take it home transmuted,
God’s providence that had been concealed
in the calamity revealed at last?
He is flooded with a sense of relief and freedom.
With pre-dawn chill invading the room
and mourning doves beginning to voice
their nonspecific discontent, sleep proves impossible.
An image from his dream tickles his mind.
Opening his notebook he scribbles hastily “Punctuation”
and sets down the poem that presses itself upon him:
“Tentative as commas they balance on wing~swung wires along which our voices speed,
“preside with feigned indifference
over crackling reports of our triumphs,
our dissembled defeats; our garbled anguish,
“and sometimes rise, excitedly cawing, a flurry of black exclamation marks against the sky’s pale slate
“pointing, perhaps, a lover’s voluble avowals or the finality of a choked goodbye,
“then settle nervously
on their high—strung perch,
a dark ellipsis,
resigned to brood on the ambiguous tongue
of those who cannot soar.”
That is the past, or part of it, he thinks, closing his book and walking to the window before his inner dissenting voice
presents its inevitable quibble.
THE Bahá’í WORLD
As dawn takes command of the sky
he offers the prescribed prayer,
then, extemporizing, supplicates: As daylight appropriates the darkness
may God’s will appropriate mine_
and with quiet elation prepares leisurely
to descend to breakfast.
All that one relinquishes of the past is not so
consciously shed, he thinks, as the wake-up call
which he forgot to cancel cuts through his reverie
with an imperious ring.
D a y T w 0 The T rouble with Mountains
Leaving the hotel with others in the light camaraderie of pilgrimage he remembers with renewed astonishment that the sun-drenched Vista presenting itself before them is the mountain of God. At last the unattainable attained.
He thinks of mountains he’s known,
remembers the Rockies, Kilimanj aro, San Jacinto,
the snow—furred lions of Vancouver’s coastal range.
And now this rocky hill, Carmel’s bony spine
from whose grudging soil these gardens were coaxed
and jacaranda persuaded to grant its mauve benefaction.
But nature was here before the designer
imposed his Order
intent upon the ravishment of human Vision
and the pilgrims’ eyes are furnished proof,
seared by the sight of a brilliant red poppy
defiant among the tangle on the untended outcrop
beyond the garden’s boundary.
[Page 1177]
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He thinks of his father
Who found mountains claustrophobic,
and of the upward climb of the soul,
and of the early pilgrim Who was reminded
by Shoghi Effendi, When she protested the slope
and the challenging paths,
that Baha’u’llah bids us advance on feet of brass
led by Him on feet of steel.
He wonders Why he has waited so long to approach this unprepossessing hill that so daunts him and Whether his commitment is adequate to aid him up its incline Where a panorama and enhanced perspective are the rewards. He imagines himself at the crest, flushed and breathless, looking and pointing——There./ T here! T here! barely able to Withstand the beauty, the acuity of Vision, the intensive joy.
Extraneous thoughts, but that evening he writes:
“We come to this mountain late
in laggard wonder
and atrophied awe,
in distrust of the promptings of angels, the voice in the thunder.
“Like the 01d plainsman brought dazed t0 the coast to die,
needing to hate
Vancouver and his death,
Who glared sullenly at its peaks
Which to outwit defeat
he’d never try
protesting they block the view
and stifle breath.
“An ant’s dusty truth. We gaze at our thom-stabbed feet.
It is too late, too late,
the bruising stones reveal
to follow to the summit
One Whose feet were steel.
1177
“And do not hear the battered bird high in the torturing wind: Pass! Pass! With adamant soul
and sharpest sight
onfeet ofbrass/ ”
I shall call it, he reflects as he falls asleep, “The Trouble with Mountains”, though the trouble is With us.
A bird invades his dreams of labouring upward
urging him forward With sharp little cries
and sometimes dipping to gaze into his eyes.
At breakfast he asks a fellow pilgrim to Whom he related his dream, “Was it Dickinson Who wrote Hope is the thing withfeathers?” Although knowing the lines well, he hoped to explore their implications, savour the meaning of his experiences behind the locked door of sleep and postpone entry
into the day’s experience. But poetry has no place amid the clatter Of cutlery and the pilgrims’ hasty preparations, is dismissed with a shmg by his companion Who, delirious With anticipation, pores over a city map and charts an unscheduled Visit
to a holy site.
The insistent world is never far away, he thinks, gulping coffee that has not had time to cool.
D a y T h r e e Choreography ofReverence
Another day of soul-reeling busyness, Of gluttonous banquets of the spirit and ample feastings Of the eyes.
He is a magpie gathering memories seizing and sorting and storing
a miscellaneous haul to nourish him
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after the banishment of departure, time’s cruellest farman.
In the courtyard, as he chats With a pilgrim, her young daughter rushes up in the uninhibited exuberance of six fresh from her private possession of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Shrine which had been momentarily deserted. With shining eyes she announces that Within the Master’s tomb filled With forgiveness and soft pink light she had ached to leave Him something so broke into a small rapturous dance having nothing else to offer. He had been so lonely as a prisoner, she tells them, then, exulting, she floats away fulfilled, a rush of swirling skirts and evanescence, oblivious to her mother’s apprehensive glance. But the Shrine beams back approval.
Leaming, always learning, is his late—night thought, the skipping child’s smile still With him and her assuredness in tendering
her spontaneous gift. Tired as he is, he yet takes up his journal, writes of “the Choreography of reverence” and then:
“We, deft practitioners
of protocols of piety
are stranded on unceitainty Who had entered and then left that rare Presence,
rehearsed petitioners, joylessly
and empty-handed.”
Other phrases suggest themselves
but he is too fatigued and
laden With impressions to carry the thought further.
That night he dreams of the biblical Widow
offering her mite, her face shining,
her eyes full of light. And she is dancing.
THE BAHA’l WORLD
D a y F 0 u r The Perfect Journey
The pilgrimage a meal,
each day a different course,
but no cessation of hunger.
Why had he waited to walk
on the mountain that had known
the footstep of the King?
Had he a shadow self intent upon
the sabotage of his best interests,
the shipwreck of his growth?
All day, in quiet moments,
he gives himself to this question,
jingling it in the pocket of his mind
like a worn but favourite coin.
Later, alone and sated with the
day’s unassimilated sensations and delights, he writes:
“This, the perfect journey; this alone Although the spurious brother came With petulant demand
he was substanceless in all that light.
“T he choices leading to this holy stone
I blessed in silence but could not name;
outstretched a timid hand
but heard the banished sobbing in his night.
“Turned to embrace him then. T 0 claim this home,
an angel spoke, enter whole or else remain
Eden ’5 orphan; understandmthe brother blesses, too,
though is not blessed with sight. ”
He has been at Bahjí. He sees the heat: of Carmel aglow
at sunset as the bus returns to its starting point,
feels the shadow self offering conciliation,
a tenuous truce, the wholeness that makes one human,
the unity from Which one can choose between
LITERARY AND MUSICAL WORKS
the dark and the light, the murk and the gleam.
He remembers reading the Master’s avowal
that the mere mention of the name of the Magdalene
brought a smile to the face of Bahá’u’lláhm
she had risen from shade and obscurity,
chosen the light that is unfading,
and While the men wept and eowered
became the first among Christ’s followers to know.
The mountain in his sleep that night
is drenched With light,
covered With velvety grass and starred With flowers from Which tears flow. The hearts of the lovers, he murmurs
in the Pidgin of half-consciousness
but the dream ends and sleep draws him closer to her anesthetizing breast.
D ay Fi v e A Metropolis owalS
‘Akká disturbs him, unrelievedly grey,
brooding, and malevolent. Its menacing walls
give off an exhausted, sour odour,
refusing to reflect the light
and giving foothold, in their crevices,
to only the hardiest weeds.
He knows he sees it through the eyes of the exiles.
He walks through the city’s narrow lanes
hoping fancifully to hear the footstep of the Master
or glimpse Him at a Window.
But ‘Akká is a shuttered world,
confining and oppressive and filled With an air of loss,
the clanging iron of deprivation.
Denial lurks in every doorway.
He enters the cell as though hobbled in heavy chains
picturing it dank, dark and verminous.
He shudders. Is it his heart he trails behind him,
1179
an unbearable weight, and his intractable Will that Clasps his wrists in an icy grip?
From the shore he looks across to the mountain Where have been raised in marble the Vindicating structures Which, in the play of shimmering light, grow luminous. At the crest he glimpses the imposing edifice Where God has seated justice and raised the nine men of Baha to serve her.
‘Abbl’id’s house, all majesty and power,
gives him solace. From its balcony he looks down
on the congested alleys of ‘Akká
then gazes at the room Where the Kitab-i—Aqdas
was revealed, its Author commanding a full View
of the neighbour’s petty transgressions and their lines of
flapping laundry, limp as the flags of defeat.
Though he knows in the late hours
that on subsequent Visits
‘Akká Will be the bustling town of
vivacious people he glimpsed
like an artists’ underdrawing
behind the historical overlay
his distress superimposed upon it,
his journal bears the brunt of his dismay.
He pictures ‘Akká as an ageing courtesan,
cold—hearted, and abandoned to beg her bread,
then writes:
“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
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1180
at the hawk’s cry,
nor heed the quemlous questions of the owl.
The pale paste jewel of her lighthouse
beckons wanly but the senile, impotent mosque
can only lewdly smile. She does not see
the stricken night huddling comfortlessly
by her garrnent’s soiled, unfastened hem
nor hear her own demented keening
echoed in the surf’ 3 low moan,
much less gaze adoringly at Carmel
extreating 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 0r contrition.
“She knows the moment When she chose her death,
knows it, lives it, nightly
as the murmurous sing~whispering waves pile in,
forty upon forty, restless With accusation:
the Cargo of cargoes ignominiously spewed ashore;
the metallic futile protest of the ulsted chain;
the thickening indignation of the sordid, misled mob;
the unwilling lock-key turning in a prison cell;
the infamous farmén piously read (she knows it well, the parchment crackling Wildly in her reeling brain);
the shattered skylight and the frail youth’s twisted frame; F
the mother’s sob—and then, and then,
Oh then, unbearably, the scratching of a Pen!
“The dawn releases her to trinkets, plastic wares,
THE Bahá’í WORLD
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 recede,
her unspeakable, lip—locked, bosomburied crime
(till their eve’s retelling)
a secret aqueously kept: To have seen the loneliness of God and not have wept!”
The pain of reviewing the Beloved’s tribulations leaves him spent and restless.
“We are saved not once
but once in every moment”, he broods, “With
every breath we must choose grace. Stasis is death.”
Sleep, When it comes, brings him Mazra‘ih, soothes him With echoes of laughter. He is surrounded in dream by verdancy and dehiscence, the hibiscus gaping in wonder, their leaves clapping green hands in jubilation, and sees delineated in an unwavering light the spareness and simplicity of the architecture of happiness.
D a y S i x The Refuge ofCowards
Every hour new bounties to catlogue. Bahjí is an oasis, its garden a rare and living carpet, its walks the very corridors of heaven. It draws the pilgrims to it With quiet power that causes their hearts to shake. He, With the others, approaches in an exquisite fear With trembling knees. What will be asked of him here?
LITERARY AND MUSICAL WORKS
But beyond the stately doors
the atmosphere
is all compassion and unquestioning welcome.
He feels as though the silence~—its punctation, birdsong comprehends all, answers all; that no word
has yet been coined to describe this fragrant hush.
Had he expected lightning to cleave him,
choirs of angels to strike up ethereal hymns?
The feel of the threshold when his brow touches it
is that of a father’s worn hand extended in forgiveness,
soothing, warming, calming, and offering
the “There, there, little one” comfort that a parent
provides a fretting child exhausted from sobbing.
All prayer save that transcending syllables and soundsthe phrase drifts to him from a half-remembered prayer seems inappropriate here where supplications sing
in the pulse and praise ascends in the breath of every moment.
An industrious ant toils across the mosaic of petals
that uncomplainingly accept its slow progress.
He remembers having written at one time, imagining this present Visit:
“. . .Stillness gives us back with scented breath:
Who chooses love of Me must first choose deat .”
The words seem too stark for this restful haven
Where he would gladly close his eyes and sleep
blissfully, innocently, securely,
his own breathing his lullaby.
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He wanders through the garden’s tapestry. wondering at the art of it, the sheer beauty, the suitability of its spoked paths
to hold the jewel set there within Which lies God’s Own Gem.
And struck by the simplicity, he writes, leaning against a tree:
“Is this then all there is, a simple garden,
And a silence that displaces need for words?
What portent in the blood~red wayside peppy?
What message in the music of the birds?
“The hero’s heart is hoisted on a cypress,
The saint’s is softly folded as a rose;
But mine lies shattered here among the pebbles
On the only path the faintng coward knows.”
Pleased with his efforts he hums,
fitting a melody to the words,
till he is called back by a waving pilgrim
to the bus—to-catch realm, the arena of need, uncertainties and sudden departures.
“I came here to war with my soul and I think I’ve lost the battle,”
a pilgrim remarks as they stroll through fading light to the hotel. “The beauty of the gardens alone was enough to capture the castle.”
In his room the words will not leave him.
He plays with the conceit, decides on the
title “Dispatch from a War Zone” and writes:
“Spring’s unheralded invasion arrows of light ambush intention zeppelin clouds in an azure assault Vision held hostage by verdancy
“shrapnel of petals the air’s fragrant artillery
1182
bombards the reeling senses unconditional surrender demanded
“rhetorical birds
melodious saboteurs
forecast capitulation
the conscripted grass assumes its green uniform
“landmines of flowers in red pools
ranks of bauhinias
camouflaged in twigs engage in espionage
plot pink and White cannonades
“sap rises in the trees like adrenalin buds of affirmation on every branch and the heart explodes into bloom always the first casualty.”
The critic somewhere deep inside of him
offers the accustomed ridicule
but, lighthearted and chuckling, he counters:
“If you’re my still, small voicewbe still!
This is my pilgrimage, my response, my poem!”
Within minutes, sleep brings armistice
and he hears no sound till morning.
D a y S e v e n Conditional T was
Surfeited With bright social exchanges,
he eludes the convivial congregation of pilgrims,
sets out for the Shrine of the Master,
walking slowly, relishing the scent,
the gentle morning sunlight, his solitude,
picking his way among—he smiles at a knot
of youngsters bound for school—the Children OfIsrael,
savouring the metaphor, Isaiah’s words flitting
lightly across the screen of his mind,
...cmdye shall be gathered one by one,
O ye children oflsrael When the refracted light
THE BAHA’l WORLD
suddenly cancels the green day
presenting to him a mirage, a trackless desert,
With a suddenness that takes his breath away.
Fishing for his notebook he remembers
the desertplace of Matthew, Mark and Luke
and writes, resting on a 10W stone wall:
“In the sandy convolutions of this land scape
grainy, parched and impersonal as God’s brain
perception shifts and shimmers
and the crazed hot Wind mutters apocalyptically.
Here, we are beyond the known and possible.
“Can anything survive the unquenchable sun?
A solitary lizard darting from invisibility
to invisibility like a fleeting thought
leaves no trace.
“The stinging eye, amazed,
sees the heat as a solid malignancy
hulking 0n the horizon
mesmerizing and merciless.
The combustible soul might vanish in a puff
leaving the chaired self to stumble back
into the verdant world
Wild—eyed and jabbering incoherently about last things.
“Small wonder the Prophets were placed in this oven
Where the heat consumes all but compassion
that they might return to our midst,
igneous and authoritative, but speaking redemptive words glacially austere to cool our raging fever.”
His effort restores to his eye the palette, the greens returning With heightened intensity,
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the flowers riotously coloured, the sky indelibly blue.
He imagines he sees Baha’u’llah’s pitched tent,
the imprint of His sandals and, in the distance,
‘Abdu’l-Bahá striding away rapidly
bent on some errand for His Father,
His cream—coloured ‘aba swirling behind Him,
His White hair glinting Where it escapes His turban.
The Shrine again compels him. He draws close
overwhelmed by a desire to protect it,
even to feel responsible for it, on a plane
exalted above private ownership,
that it become part of the heritage
of coming generations. Reaching it as tourists
begin to arrive, busload after busload,
he stands aside watching, touched by their subdued bearing
that is incongruous with their festive clothing,
their holiday mood, their cameras and sunhats.
The rows of shoes they leave outside stab him With tenderness,
as though this small obeisance has left them vulnerable and,
unweighted by leather, they might float away Skyward,
delirious With delight, never to be seen again.
Is it not theirs too, though they may not yet claim it? The Revelation, warrant for service for all,
the Shrine its emblem, the Covenant its seal.
Alone, later, in his chosen ventricle,
delivered of his prayers,
he offers wordless gratitude, remembers friends,
experiences a tranquil sense of well-being,
almost a coziness, in the diffuse rosy light.
What tithe is asked here? he asks the dustmotes
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cavofting animatedly in a ray, but hears the bruised petals reply
Accept! Accept! and the Master’s warm laughter
that offers renewal of courage and the intimacy of an embrace.
On What conditions must I accept? But, unanswered,
the trite words sink into the plushy carpet
With the arrival of other worshippers.
An evening stroll, listening to his own footfall,
he thinks of the mind’s spat with the heart,
the quintessential row, the lastingness of it,
the tentative and conditional truoes between skirmishes.
A rhythm begins in his head and, stopping for coffee
in a quiet cafe, he takes up a paper napkin and writes:
“A lifetime is composed of rows
and grudges daily home.
Though evening calm repairs the breach the quarrel resumes each morn.
“If my lifetime were dumbstmok as peace I would bicker as a ruse
and set it warring With my heart“
too soon comes final truce.”
“Something is owed to Emily Dickinson,” his internal voice scoms,
but ignoring his fractious mentor he walks to the lookout
that places in View a crescent of winking lights
stretching around the bay from Haifa to ‘Akká
like a discarded tiara. “All poets owe something to all poets,”
he retorts, emboldened by the darkness
and his need to etch the scene in memory.
He is glad to join the small circle of friends in the hotel lobby Who are postponing sleep
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reviewing the day’s treasures,
Whispering, giggling, or in awe,
enj oying their own recounting. Their affable chatter
restores his social self, bonds them to him
even more deeply, makes parting difficult
though his pillow beckons and his eyes droop.
Rising to go the words “Seventh day!” are on every lip. Has it for them, too, passed too swiftly?
But sleep is elusive. The reality of leaving
Mount Carmel begins to bear in. He reconstructs
for his journal lines he had written
long years before he embarked on this pilgrimage
When he had wondered about the “What now?”
that he felt must be every suppliant’s nervous, parting plea:
“‘O my Beloved’, the pilgrim said,
‘I am filled With childish dread.
You send me forth. But Where?
Do not leave me in despair,
tell me What now lies ahead.
What strange, dark roads must I tread?’
“‘Go gladly without a care, naught shall harm a single hair of your dear, faithful head. Wherever you may be led know this: I shall be there beside you. I shall be there.”’
The voice of derision casts up its scorn.
“They’ll say you’ve been reading George Herbert,”
he hears as he closes his notebook.
“Had I Herbert’s purity of heart
I could make it needle to my compass,
launch my frail craft of faith
on the turbulent sea that laps the shores of ‘Yea, verily! ”’,
he thinks, eyes shut, but cannot rescue the thought
' THE BAHA’I WORLD
which is carried away on a tide of exhaustion
to a deep cool place Where no sound can be heard
above the gentle plashing of water among the ferns.
D a y E ig h t A Call on the Sleepers
Here on the mountainside are the graves of holy ones
the chaste White columns of their markers,
smooth as alabaster, standing in unreproachful dignity.
Now his most tenuous prayer uttered almost inaudibly
seems to give ready access
to these choicest of the choice
Whose sacrifice and service
eamed them proximity to their Beloved
in this palm—fringed setting.
And at the mountain’s foot another cluster of sleepers
Who dropped their labours here at the world’s heart
rest in a genial garden where warm sunlight
plays hide-and—seek among the eucalyptus and pine.
There is no sorrow here, only triumph
and a companionable silence. Sweet promptings pervade“
he might, on impulse, hug the markers,
recite aloud the Victorious tenants’ names.
He feels a need to knit and purl himself
into history, to gain a sense of belonging,
as though his choice of the Faith
had ostracized him from the ordinary,
expunged his record, denied him common privileges,
left him Without citizenship or passpofi.
Now in this hushed colony
the gravemarkers like unfurled scrolls
offer their mute, comforting testimony,
the verification of heaven’s handful.
In the rustling of the palms he hears
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Accept! Accept!
Here lies Winnifred Harvey who passed to him
the chalice containing the immortal draught.
It had come to her from Rowland Estall
who had accepted it from May Maxwell’s hands.
The link contemplating its place in the chain.
This Faith so young one can trace ancestry,
dare hope secretly for kinship of spirit.
But he turns abruptly from the presumptuous claim.
He thinks of those who have laid their bones
in faiflung tombsmthose victors
in whose wake all advancewand of
Thomas Breakwell in his lonely unmarked grave.
Familiar names now meet his gaze, carved
on White tombstones formal as engraved invitations:
Horace Holley, Fugita,
the Revell sisters, John Esslemont,
many distinguished and obscure.
Waves of admiration sweep over him.
For each dear name a smile of recognition and a prayer.
F tom the cemeteiy he looks up to Carmel
needing always to have replenished to his Vision
the slope’s white ornament, its dome gleaming in the sun;
and looks out to the sea, Alfred cle Musset’s
words Erje me demandaz's: Est—ce assez d ’admirer?
coming to his mind, casting a small shadow
across his contentment. The sea. The Most Great Ocean. i
“It is not enough to marvel; the sea asks more”,
he recites aloud, remembering an early poem
he had written, but only a fragment comes to him:
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“Let the dreaming, lovely drowned Who 1011 and bob in bubbled wonder tell us why, returning,
weeping without sound,
we stand, wistful and incredulous, along the shore.”
At Pilgrim House later he feels
an unearned excruciating happiness
amid the happy babble of voices rising and
falling in soft exclamations Of reunion.
Am I feeling this, or is it that
I feel I should feel it? an inner voice challenges,
but he turns from it to render a small sewice
to a pilgrim. Was the gesture sincere?
the voice persists, the bicameral mind
a constant observer, ever disdainful,
tireless in spying on even his most private moments.
“Prithee desist, Hamlet”, he chides himself,
clumsily counterfeiting Shakespeare,
“lest thou bar thy way back to innocence.”
The notion of retum seems feasible here
in this sea of fellowship and warm acceptance.
Preparing for bed, thinking of Esslemont,
he chuckles remembering Samuel J ohnson’s
“Much may be made of a Scotchman
if he be caught young.” He takes up his pen
to write a tribute, imagines the graveside
trees remarking This bonny lad did well
and pauses, pleased with his inventiveness.
Let Esslemont stand for all the faithful ones
whose memoxy we keep, he thinks, before sleep
engulfs him in a black cloak of forgetfulness.
D a y N i 71. e Souvenir
The day bursts open like a pod
in this complex garden
dispensing the promise of a potential fulfilled.
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The silky air carries the commingled scents
of roses and mysteries
and the faint echo of unanswered questions
that have come to rest among the placid flowers
or tumble fretfully on the grass
Where pools of sunlight soothe them.
On the trees the enviable oranges
glow like contented stars in their green universe.
Was it submission that taught them roundness,
passion that set them ablaze?
Their juices have the sham taste of renunciation.
Does one weary of nightingales and peacocks?
he wonders irrelevantly, pausing by statuary,
teasing out his progress.
But no preparation is adequate to What awaits.
All paths lead to the centre Where
~aspiration given form the marble marvel holds Upright
its golden head above dust that altered history.
Entry gained, the pilgrim knows
this is the breeding place of questions,
this ideal model of the heart’s own chambers,
this humbling vault Where,
head on carpeted threshold,
the suppliant hears Whispered in his veins
Accept! Accept!
Must I accept, he wonders, that my life is
the sum of my questions, my answers?
That I must make a higher Will my own?
He frowns at the uselessness of words,
the fruitlessness of speculation,
smiles at his Wish to wring from that reticent place
a formula for perfection, then emerges to stumble
from sanctuary into demanding daylight.
A petal has clung to his moist forehead.
THE BAHA’I’ WORLD
He smilingly removes the fragile token,
a scented receipt, places it in his prayerbook. Almost furtively he passes the disinterested cypresses that point heavenward,
the Wind in their uplifted boughs sighing Accept! Accept!
A sense of urgency pervades him
but he is reluctant to part from the garden
Where now the jasmine’s perfume captivates his sense,
paralyzing his Will.
“Laughter is divine antidote to pomposity;
art is a bulwark against fanaticism;
there are many molds of holiness” all he had reasoned he rehearses here,
panning for affirmations. But he has been given
all the nuggets his heart can hold.
A rosary of farewells at Pilgrim House, promises to keep in touch.
The pilgrims’ faces glow With earnestness and gratitude: they have won through, gathered to them their trophies.
Dazedly they call “Good—bye! God bless!” His affection affords each head a nimbus.
He leaves through the gate’s lacy iron barricade
Which yields daily to the ardency of lovers
to resume his ordinary life
in the world of contention and crises and clocks.
Already, deadlines tug at his sleeve
and schedules jostle one another
clamouring for his attention.
He looks back wistfully to his refuge
then returns to his room to pack
the belongings he would gladly jettison
though already his bag feels weightless.
He is gnawed by a sense of having forgotten
some Vital possession, wonders What
he may have unwittingly relinquished
among the petals or lost like a cherished
talisman along some pebbled path. A failed self?
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Later, there is one more good—bye
as the cab flashes past his loved landmark,
just a glimpse, a pang,
the bloodless death of separation
under a moon coolly indifferent to this wrenching.
The car speeds on, bent obsessively
on effecting his expulsion from all he knows of Eden.
At the airport, seeking consolation, possessive, hoping to bolster memmy, he buys a last postcard
of the building With the gold tiled dome, makes his seat selection,
smuggles his convictions past Customs and, aboard the aircraft, in the fretful sleep Of the traveller, broods on the
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aptness of his purchased bric-a—brac
despairingly matching gift to receptor.
As dawn musters its luminous rose affirmation
he turns in his dream to his truest souvenir:
Many pilgrims. Many questions.
One unalterable answer:
Accept! Accept!
Roger White (Israel)
[ T he poem does not follow strictly the program ofpilgrimage nor does it allude to every point ofhz'storic interest visited by Bahd ’z'pilgrims during the course of their stay in the Holy Land]
