وما كنت أهوى الدار إلا لأهلها"
"على الدار بعد الظاعنين سلام
—أسامة بن منقذ

A child asks for a bedtime song.
His mother starts, "you are my sunshine"
and the toddler bursts into wails.

Sometimes the grass is greener
in the bleak nights of winter
and you just wish for a few hours
to be lost and alone in the woods
or maybe in the neon downtown
where everyone is laughing but you
and maybe the homeless man
in the wheelchair.

But then you want home.
Fluorescent streets are no places
to be without another to hold
your hand and hear your woes.

How sad it is that friends
don't hold hands in this city.
I miss the slow strolls
after fajr from the 35th gate
of the prophet's mosque,
hand in hand with my sheikh till
the elevator a few hundred meters
away where he would disappear.

Sigh...Those were blessed mornings.
I was always wretched but those,
those were blessed mornings.
And maybe it's wrong to call myself
wretched but it feels that way
when I find myself mothing to sin
and soulless, sensless, grueling gluttony.

Strange is the night and its will.
Sometimes it forces you in a hole
and makes you want to barracade
against all creatures who may visit,

and other times it tugs on you
coaxing you out into the peace
and embrace of stereo chirps.

In the end, the home of all homes
is the house of God, and the mosque
of all mosques is the heart, alive
in remembrance, where lives God.
And if He leaves then there is no peace
and there is no solace. Then no hand
can bring comfort to a dead heart
and no amount of love can breathe
life into a graveyard of a home.

أَلا كُلُّ شَيءٍ ما خَلا اللَهَ باطِل"
"وَكُلُّ نَعيمٍ لا مَحالَةَ زائل
—لبيد بن ربيعة


© Walyullah