The Wastes Of Profound Silence Poem by Mystic Qalandar

In the wastes of profound silence
I sit motionless,
where half-alive words
rise like waves
in the river of mind
and drown in stillness—
a mute swell
whose vastness
swallows everything.

I am the one who waits.
I know now
that waiting itself
is the greatest move
on the chessboard of being—
the square
where victory and defeat
become a single face,
where time's ranks
march from eternity to eternity
in a single breath.

We learned such steadfastness
from the order of the heavens—
from turning stars,
from the heart's constant beat,
each repeating the same secret.

A book rests on the niche of my heart,
its pages opening in air,
closing in the eyes—
we have read it a thousand times,
and each time as if for the first.

'Will you inscribe my meaning
on the parchment of your consciousness? '
the book calls,
as desert calls to sand,
as sleep calls the sleeper.

Then I go to the skilled physician
who sits within my pulse,
listens to my pulse,
and dissolves the medicine of his being
into mine—
a cure that heals the wound
and makes a new wound of healing.

Like the devotee
whose mosque is the universe,
raising the single finger
toward the One
who is in every one,
I make my covenant—
to the question
'Am I not your Lord? '—
a question before time
and after time—
not with tongue alone
but with every breath, each step, each act,
I answer, always, Yes—
a Yes
that is affirmation and annihilation,
confession and question,
end and beginning.

Life's commands of light and dark
descend on my hearing and mind
like deep footprints—
not the blinding light,
nor the lost dark,
but turquoise light
that turns shadow
into pearl.

My selves—self and spirit—
clothed in servitude,
devote themselves to obedience—
as the river yields to flow,
as stone bows to its weight.

I sit motionless
in this waste of profound silence—
this waste is my true being,
its sand
marked by my steps
and scattered by my breath,
on whose horizon
waiting and attainment
dissolve to a single point—
where I am
neither waiter
nor awaited,
but the very coming-forth
of waiting itself—
that which always was
and always will be—
the answer to the eternal question,
hidden within its own asking.

─MyKoul