Mosque Poem by Rafey Habib

Here, within your white, white walls
I can stand
Alone with You, the Alone;
Away from the whispers of the world
That bleed in my own heart;
Away from fleeting and fancy,
From the torment that thirsts
In my own soul.

I have felt you, near the rivers of my heart,
As if on the verge of a great promising.
I have sought you, bitterly, in broken lives
Of people twisted over by the world’s disasters;
I have not heard your voice, even faintly,
In the loud ramblings of imams who explain
Your justice as if it were a trite thing.
I know you are not trite or easy:
The path to you is always long;
I know I am never fit for your presence,
I am forever beneath your language,
I am unworthy of your paradise;
I am not fit to fall before you.
But when
O when will you hear
The voices raised of those
Who have erased their lives in your service,
As if on the verge of an eternal reckoning;
Who have killed their ambition
Brought their lust to kneel
Who have murdered their passion
In the coldest of blood-feuds.
When will you hear the cry of
Those who have died for you?