Beneath The Chinār's Vault Poem by Mystic Qalandar

I tread the void road,
etched as lines upon a palm—
Each step a turning in the One,
a slow, revolving calm.
The earth retains a mother's hum,
a deep and rhythmic sound,
A steady pulse that rises from
the undivided ground.

Beneath the chinār's woven shade,
in tracings light has wrought,
I am a note within a tune
that never can be taught—
A zikr too complete for words,
a rustling on the air,
The sovereign of remembrance,
a stillness hanging there,
The unstruck chord that mends the soul
and makes the fragments whole.
O veiled simplicity!
O breath behind the scroll!

Where did you go
when I was sent to roam,
When ego's thorny wilderness
became my exile-home?
You left that valley paradise
where great chinārs ascend,
Roots anchored in the human heart,
their crowns in God depend,
Bearing fruits of knowing
from eternal branches grown—
While I was banished from the lap
of Kashmir's melting snow.

Now time's hot crucible
has left my spirit old,
A mendicant who leans upon
your voice, at once soft and bold—
The silken question, 'Alast? '
breathed into the soul's deep core,
To recall the ancient'I Am'
that was mine forevermore,
To find the mirrored self again,
untarnished and foreseen,
Beneath the everlasting shade,
the chinār's living green.

—December,13,2025