Hijrah Poem by Rafey Habib

A journey, broken
By night and thought
Of warring gods;
desert rock and sand conspired
To feed a vision inflamed
Beyond enchainment;
In a lonely cave, past and future
Kissed with light an old language;
An ancient heritage burned silently its tongue
In a place where shadows danced out Truth;
Dimensions froze in a poetry of wilderness,
Silent, yet meant for human ears.
His eyes upon the horizon
Of a darkened plain;
Eyes upon the horizon:
Wherever he turned, the desert night
Was spread with an archangel's wings.

A prophetic gaze followed them, now
Who go, whose suffering has exhausted fear, whose steps
Are led by heavy memories:
tortured parents, murdered brethern, whose
Faith humbles the Unknown:
Pitiful their baggage, and lost in their
Knowing, yet attuned somehow
To a sanctity beyond the call of sense
And the politics of living.
Mothers, whose purity burns again;
Children, whose innocence
Impoverishes the promise of the world:
Pioneering a stillness
Fathered by and beyond Word.

Journeying toward the Other, yet
Breathing the dust of this-worldly time: treaties,
Marriages, songs, rites and feuds;
Blemished echoes of the Transcendent Voice;
Stepping onto the plains of Ohad
The old and new warred in his heart;
In mail and helmet, a warrior stared
Across the battlefield between
Two natures.