The Unyielding Light Of Jamia Masjid Poem by Mohammad Younus

They have barred my doors,
stilled the pulse of courtyards,
silenced the river of feet—
the majestic bowed Chinars
beneath my arch of sky.

Yet I endure.
In the hush where echoes vanish,
where whispers once wove through air,
I breathe.
I gather time,
cradling the memory of hands
that shaped my stones into prayer.

I am not mere mortar and minaret,
nor shadow cast by sunlit domes.
I am the ache in a thousand throats,
the hymn that trembles unsung,
the ember no night can swallow.

Centuries slip like sand
through my gates—
empires crumble,
wars flare and fade,
monsoons and droughts
etch their names into my skin.

Still, I remain.
These walls, mirrors to the stars;
this floor, a river of prayers
bathed in rains
that once kissed the brows
of those who dreamed me
into being.

I am the anthem of endurance,
the compass pointing always to dawn.
Lock your chains,
seal silence into every crevice—
but you cannot smother the fire
that flickers in the veins
of the nameless, the countless.

Each stifled prayer
splits open like a seed of longing.
And when these doors bloom anew,
the wind will carry old hymns,
braided with voices rising,
until my very stones tremble
with the thunder of a people
whose roots outlast every storm.

—MyKoul