The Light That Neither Languishes Nor Lingers Poem by Mystic Qalandar

No "I" birthed the Light—
only the Light
in which "I" seemed to arise.

Before the tongue could lean toward "am, "
before the cleft
of knower and known—
prior even to before:
This.

Not shining—for none stands apart to receive.
Not hidden—concealment requires two.

It neither lingers nor departs;
such gestures belong
only to the imagined.

It is—
though even "is"
casts that faint, needless shadow.

No distance
between Light and the named self,
none between self and world—
a seamlessness
never stitched, never torn.

The world:
a passing syllable
of the One uttering Itself
as forms that bloom and fade.

No gulf ever opened
between source and reflection.
The mirror was the face,
the face the seeing,
the seeing—
only the Seen.

Who would seek, and from where?
What horizon could appear
to That which never turned away?

The path curls inward
until even "inward" dissolves—
no traveler,
no elsewhere,
no return.

Even this saying
gathers a subtle veil—
a murmur
within indivisible silence.

No loss
but the dream of apartness;
no gain
but its quiet undoing.

The moon—
no borrower of light,
only a name
touching a Radiance
that lends to none.

Through every eye,
every breath,
every vanishing "other"—
It beholds Itself.

Not as echo,
nor as return,
but as the only Reality:
unborn,
unceasing.

— MyKoul