Beneath The Weight Of Woven Robes, They Stand Poem by Mohammad Younus

Beneath the weight of woven robes, they stand—
sadhus, dervishes, monks, mystics, priests—
their voices steeped in the gravity of righteousness,
their eyes like wells of solemn fire,
calling the faithful to paths of restraint.
They preach abstinence, virtue, the death of desire,
their words curling like sacred incense,
filling hallowed halls with scented devotion.

Yet when the curtains fall,
and solitude wraps them in its hush,
the echoes of their sermons dissolve,
and the robes of piety slip from their shoulders.
In shadowed silence, they kneel—not before the divine,
but before idols carved in secret—
not of stone, but of self-wrought power.
Hands once raised in ascetic grace
now fashion illusions,
casting nets of reverence to ensnare the seeking.

Behind closed doors, where no gaze intrudes,
they weave their veils of mystique,
cloaking themselves in the myths of sainthood.
Their names become incantations,
their lives, legend,
until the faithful kneel, entranced,
mistaking dust for divinity.

They whisper riddles draped as doctrine,
turning superstition into sacred law,
leading seeking hearts astray—
not toward light, but deeper into shadow.
Oh, the idol-breakers,
who in secret sculpt anew,
molding faith into forms
that serve their own thirst.

Where is the truth,
when lips chant prayers
yet the heart kneels at its own throne?
Where is the light,
when torchbearers dim their own flames,
guiding multitudes into a night without dawn?

The cloaked and the uncloaked—
one in the light, one in the dark—
yet both bound by the same chains,
both lost in the same labyrinth.
And the seekers,
with hearts full of hunger,
follow the echoes of hollow voices,
unaware that the path to the divine
lies not in the hands of sculptors,
but in the breaking of every idol,
even the ones we carve within.

— MyKoul