The Return Of Al-Lāt Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Al-Lāt,
idol-queen of Ṭā'if's age of ignorance,
where mountain breezes
coaxed the orchards into bloom,
where your likeness was hewn from the cliff
and set upon a throne
inside the sanctuary.

Pilgrims laid their vows at your feet,
entrusted the longings of their hearts
to lifeless stone,
and went home empty-handed—
yet full of hope.

Ṭā'if,
where gardens flourished in the shade of date palms,
where frankincense drifted through the sanctuary air,
and your worshippers asked of you
favor, fortune, salvation.

Manāt stood beside you;
far off on the desert horizon
al-'Uzzā shone.
Three names, three sacred bonds,
and behind them all the claim to a reality
that imagination had molded
into three shapes.

But al-Lāt,
names change, temples change,
the manner of worship changes.
Do the convictions of the heart?
Does illusion, once it dons the robe of sanctity,
become real?
Does stone, once it becomes the focus of longing,
have its silence turned
into the language of grace?

Your name passed out of Arabia's sands
into the pages of history.
Your temple was erased, your likeness shattered,
the last frankincense burned in your presence
dissolved into air.
But did you vanish?

Even now, on the thresholds of certain shrines,
lamps of vows still burn;
around certain tombs
threads of hope are still tied;
before certain silent graves
hands of petition are still raised.
Is this only devotion?
Or, behind its veil,
does some ancient fear,
some primordial need,
some forgotten illusion still breathe?

Does every raised hand know its addressee?
Does every prostration know its destination?

Once, rubies and jewels lay in your temple,
and prayers, striking the stone walls,
were lost in air.
Hope stood on lifeless stones;
reverence completed its circuit
around a carved face.

Then time turned over.
The desert winds shifted.
Your temple stood no more,
and your name became
the emblem of a broken era.

The call of monotheism rose.
The idols were smashed,
and man was told
that prayer's true addressee is not stone,
that giving does not flow from a carved form,
that reality will not be confined
in any mold he has made.

But, silent witness of history,
did the breaking of idols end idolatry?
Did the demolition of stone temples
bring down the temples within us?
Did erasing the names
erase the conceptions
those names once sheltered?

The songs of ancient poets
beneath the desert moon
resounded with your name;
their verses, despite the silence of centuries,
are alive.
And with them lives the question
every age asks of itself:
What you hold sacred—
have you even recognized it?

al-Lāt! al-'Uzzā! Manāt!
And Hubal!
From the broken pages of history
you raise your heads again,
sometimes as a name,
sometimes as a bond,
sometimes as a nameless fear,
sometimes as a hope
leaning on something to stand.

Your temples are gone,
but your memory is kept
in the storerooms of remembrance.
And somewhere,
in flowers laid on graves,
in threads tied around tombs,
in vows and offerings,
in the boundless devotion
given to some figure of clay,
I see your shadows.

I do not say every visit is idolatry,
every devotion error,
or that hands raised before every grave
mean one and the same thing.
But I ask:
where does devotion end
and worship begin?
When does reverence become adoration?
When does man start seeking reality
in the very bonds he has carved himself?

For the age of ignorance is not only
the name of a bygone time,
nor idolatry only
the bowing of a head before stone.
The age of ignorance is perhaps the moment
man takes his conjecture for reality,
his desire for sanctity,
his own fashioned image
for the stand-in of truth.

Idols are not only of stone.
Some live on in names,
some in bonds,
some in fear,
some in hope,
and some remain enthroned
within man himself.

On the mountains of Ṭā'if
the winds still blow,
spring still descends on the orchards,
the moon still scatters the mountains' shadows
across the valley floor.
Only your temple
remains in memory alone:
in traditions passed down,
in conceptions that survive by changing names,
in shadows that take the shape of reality
and overshadow belief.

The old queen of Ṭā'if
sits on no throne now,
but her question is still with us:
Have we broken the idols,
or merely changed their names?

And I, before this question,
descend into myself
and stay a long while.
Perhaps the most ancient temple is the heart,
and the hardest iconoclasm
is to recognize the idol
of one's own conjecture.

—MyKoul