The Desolate Silence Poem by Mystic Qalandar

And then—

from within a closed room,
a flickering voice arrived.

Behind the door,
my two singers
were singing,
each her own song.

One
plucked the guitar strings;
the other
gave her melody
a honeyed throat.

Outside—
a desolate silence:
a silence
in which no sound carried far,
yet from every direction
something could be heard.

Each time
the two of them
reached that turn in the song—
the turn
soft and delicate
as a rose petal—

their voices,
like the far-off rustle
of night insects,
would slowly begin to rise.

Then
something happened
that words cannot touch.

Two voices
began to forget
their own names.

One
descended into the other;
the other
dissolved into the first—

and I
could no longer hear
who was singing.

Only one voice remained.

One melody.

One tremor.

A song
that seemed born
not from their throats,
but from within
the silence itself.

Sitting in the hallway,
I felt them
embracing—

rising
as a single voice,
a single melody,
a song exalted.

But now
I was no longer
listening only to their song;

I was listening
to the silence
that had given birth to it.

I heard
the voice hidden behind the voice,
the silence hidden behind the melody,
and within the silence
the footfall
of some unknown Presence.

Perhaps
this is samā'—

that sound
reaches the heart
before it reaches the ear;

and the heart
falls silent
before it can listen.

In a river of light,
a river of samā',
their voices floated
and began to touch
the ear of my heart—

first
my ears,
then
my chest,
then
that part of me
that has no name.

I
was no longer the listener.

I
was becoming the listening itself.

The river
did not come to touch me—

it carried me
into itself.

I searched
the waves
for my own voice;

but there
I had no voice.

There was
only a song.

And within the song,
silence.

And within the silence,
a call
that cannot be heard—

it can only
be listened to.

To swallow me whole,
that luminous river of samā'
kept descending into me.

I
did not resist.

Because
some voices
are not meant to be heard;

they come
to erase
the one who hears.

I was
a willing cup—

empty,
and full.

Grateful,
brimming
with the wine of love.

And in that
desolate silence,
when even the last song
fell silent—

still
I went on listening.

Perhaps
this is true hearing:

when the singers
fall silent,
the song ends,
the melody stops—

and what remains

is itself
the song.

—MyKoul