Homage To Rajab — The Boatman Dervish Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Across the hum of wheels along the boulevard,
Beside a lake that breathed its stillness hard,
There lay an isle that held a wooden frame—
A temple carved from solitude and name.

There Rajab, boatman born of mercy's hand,
Carried a flame no speech could shape or plan.
Each thought—a whisper of the Holy Name; his breath,
A pre-dawn stir that roused the heavens from death.
The lamp within his ribs would flare, unshaped—
The dawn's own secret in its core encased.

His words distilled a sweetness not of earth,
An ancient current flowing from a source
Before the memory of time had birth.

Then I, Younus, came with eyes of early dew,
Having forgotten what I once held true—
My vow's old weight a cloak I could not lose.
His gaze softened, and in his red-lit hue
I found a mirror for my kindling fuse.
"The heart, " he said, "unfurls as music does—
The sound that waits beneath the resting psalms."

He gave a zikr—no word, but just a trace,
A breathless rhythm woven into space,
Lifting the dark and granting sudden grace.
And hours folded into one gold sigh,
A light arising radiant from the core—
A music only deepest depths know by.

"Is this my doing? " I could barely speak.
"No, " he replied. "You are the one who seeks.
You bring the effort—prayer pressed through its pain
Until the kernel cracks and oils can seep;
Grace brings the flame that drives the shadows deep.
Truth is not spoken—it burns you clean again."

I sat long in the quiet, till the stir
Of all my questions slowly turned into
A Presence without name, without disguise—
The single Essence I had always known.

His face—a scroll where holy lines were cast;
His eyes—two lanterns of the central fire;
His life—a hymn too vast to hold or grasp,
A melody no book could ever class,
No dawn contain, nor any horizon pass.

—November,26,2025