I bow to you, my father

Forever

As my soul rests

In your shade

When you lay in the veil of dusk

And your eyes saw into the other world

I kissed your forehead

And the two worlds embraced

I caressed your hair

And my hand that grasped your fleeing life

Felt in its wrist the immense power of your grip

And I saw your spirit rise

White as the morn

Flawless as a jewel of the Hejaz

O falcon of dawn

You tore my heart apart

And returned it to me

With the imprints of your seal

My forehead touched your cross-roads beauty

Pure and spotless you passed through

The seven fires of death's agony

I kissed your hand

That still held life's warmth

And shall hold it forever

By Allah: Death has given you

Nothing but beauty

I said: O Allah, let my life be the sacrifice of this hero!

I said: O my father, take me with you where you go!

But you wrestled with the angel of death

Over my soul

And threw your eyes deep into death's wistful abyss

You who with the paws of a lion have burrowed my well

And a thousand spring wells of compassion

From your giant hand's palm rose my spirit

Like the flower of an earthen stream

And you have become the white sail on my barque

And the helmsman of my dreams

Now your soul has become

My eye's and mirror's reflection

I ask not the sea: Who is this man that you carry?

And  I ask not the boat: Who has put you to sea?

But I let my heart be its helm

And with the cry of a sea gull

I conjure sky's whiteness in you

As I sing of my journeys to the redwinged star of dawn

Tearing my face with bare nails, I plough the heavens of Sham

With tears, knives, arrows and ecstatic cries

The Lord of my heart draws open the veils of all secrets

For your spirit, my father, under the eyes of the prophet

Has danced to the wedding drums of Allah

My eye was with you and has seen

My ear was with you and has heard

Under the burning sound of trans-Saharan rhythms

The Zihr of God has revived memory's trance

And the time before time speaks to the time after time

Jerusalemite stone has steeled

The broomlike ardour of your clan

Red as the Mountains of Fire

And a song rose from strange lands to wail your departure

But to the Beloved death means not separation

But a purifying stream in which

Souls, like water molecules, merge into one

Like a bird from far Hadramawt

My eye's song comes to you

To gladden your heart with its greeting

This heart of mine and yours, pierced by the dome of Al Aqsa

Shall dance the ardha of a new reborn tribe

The worlds-transcending beauty of which

Shall unite the earth's four corners and melt them

In the sacred fire of compassion

Enraptured by oneness

Into one

By Allah: You toiled not the earth but the universe

And what your hands have forwarded is the work of more

Than one world

And what your sweat and mind brought forth

Is the seed of worlds to come

Grown of your soil

In Allah's unploughed garden named time

Where men are wild flowers

Of Paradise

Where the future is

A welcomed fruit

In every world to which you came

You live on

But the sweetest fruit of your vineyard

Shall be harvested

In the world

Of which I sprang

To be as a corner stone to the house of  new peace

Built on the creed of justice

With a thousand eyes' seerhood

And a thousand faiths' longing

My heart laments you not

But it praises your grandeur

I cry not over you

But I proclaim your heart's triumph

O my soul's loyal friend, love

Conceals nothing

And forgives all

Beyond time and space

It endures

Hidden in depth,

You are a man the universe cannot

Limit

Unseen perished those

Who were seen in their day

But you who made to see

Are seen in everything

Those limited by life

Lament you

And before you lies

Orphaned

History