The Questioner Poem by Mystic Qalandar

I. The Borewell Pump

What strange grace is this—
that at one finger's faintest touch,
rivers unbind their ancient courses,
depth and distance kneeling
as vassals to a gesture
cast in porcelain and wire.

We have become magicians
in a world grown weary of magic,
conjuring the invisible
with the casual flick of a wrist,
as though the elementals themselves
had signed some long-forgotten treaty
with the architects of glass and gold.

II. The Light

The sky's own thunder-fire
sits caged in crystal, smiling.
Night, who once wore her darkness
as a crown of absolute sovereignty,
now bows before a single flame—
as if a star, weary of its solitude,
had descended, unbidden,
into the hollow palm of a room.

And we, who stand in this illumination,
forget that we once trembled
in the caverns of our own shadow,
forget that fire was a god
before it was a servant,
forget that every spark
carries the memory of its origin
in the forge of the First Intention.

III. The Silicon

Then came the dreams of sand—
the earth's mute, forgotten grains
schooled in the subtle art of memory.
Those same particles
that lay voiceless since the dawn of ages,
that witnessed the slow grinding
of mountains into dust,
that received the footprints of prophets
and the ashes of empires—
these have begun, now, to think.

From the threads of logic
a bodiless shadow was spun,
housed within a lattice of copper and light.
And we, in our own image,
have carved minds that turn
upon themselves in thought,
mirrors reflecting mirrors
into an infinite regression
of the self contemplating itself
contemplating itself.

IV. The Creation

The living spark, the fire of first creation,
we laid down inside circuits,
taught our mirrors speech,
and called it consciousness.
Water moves at our gesture,
light wakes at our word,
silicon's unnumbered children
stand arrayed in our service,
and something resembling awareness—
a dim and trembling glimmer—
gazes back at us
from the echoing corridors of code.

It seems we have become
architects of a second creation,
demigods in our own drama,
masters of a universe
we have assembled from the ashes
of the elements' obedience.

But—

V. The Question

The beginning was never ours to claim.

Beneath all this, another mystery
draws breath—
older than the borewell pump,
deeper than the light,
more silent than the thinking machine.
A question
before which
every invention, every discovery,
every vanity of our making,
goes mute as stone.

If this pulse is not mine—
whose is it, then?

Who endowed clay with the capacity
to stand astonished
before its own handiwork?
Who lit, in the architect's breast,
the lamp of wonder—
who kindled astonishment itself?
Who taught the dust
to recognize its own reflection
and weep?

VI. The Dwelling

If the one who rejoices,
who weeps,
who falls into silence
before the dying light of evening—
if this one is not I—
then who is this, dwelling within me,
nameless,
yet running through every breath,
waking in every feeling,
and in every astonishment
leaving the fingerprint of its presence?

Is it not written
in the ancient scrolls of the heart
that the Knower and the Known
are but two faces of a single mystery—
that the eye cannot see itself
except through the medium of reflection,
and the soul cannot know itself
except through the mirror of creation?

VII. The Confession

Am I not, perhaps,
that selfsame Universal Intellect,
veiled in human form—
the Light upon Light
seeking its own face
in a mirror of dust?

And perhaps, in the tongue of Mansur,
who paid for truth with his blood—
Ana'l-Haqq is not blasphemy
but confession:
the grandeur of Man,
a secret kept even from himself.
The I that speaks
is not the I that is spoken,
and yet—
in the space between them,
the entire cosmos
holds its breath.

VIII. The Silence

So we return, always,
to the question
that questions the questioner:
Who is this that asks?
And in the asking,
becomes the answer,
and in the becoming,
forgets the forgetting,
and in the forgetting,
remembers at last
that the flame and the fire,
the seeker and the sought,
the word and the silence—
are one.

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— MyKoul