Life — Who Is Life? Poem by Mystic Qalandar

For most, life is the blade—
the wound that stays open,
the god who does not answer.

But when I saw it—
really saw it—
I could not believe
that such brightness
could bear so much grief.

Life was, to me,
like stillness at spring midnight:
clear, unbroken,
untouched by dread.

I wanted only
to rest in its breathing,
to lay down my becoming
within the cradle of my beginning,
to find the shore
where silence never breaks.

It came not as an arrival
but as recognition—
of what had always been
before I had a name.

And Life asked me:

What do you most desire?

I answered:

To remain
in the warmth of Your gaze,
within a silence
that asks for no speech,
as I was
on the first dawn
of my soul.

To be as I was then—
before drop, before sea,
when thirst and water
were not yet apart.

Before form took hold,
before the imaginal mirror
received my likeness,
there was no 'I'
to stand apart—
only the Real,
and the stillness
of Its knowing.

No distance,
no veil,
no return,
for none had departed.

The One alone
breathed
in the mystery
of no shape,
before breath
was ever called mine.

I was never apart
from the Real
before Its light
entered the world of images.

Only the Real was known
before the veil of 'I'
appeared.

I was the dream
and the dreamed,
the seer
and the seen,
the silence
before the first Word
remembered itself.

And when remembrance returned,
I knew
that nothing had been lost—
only forgotten.

Life smiled,
and the silence
answered
with itself.

—MyKoul