There Are So Many Blind Dervishes Poem by Mohammad Younus

There are so many blind dervishes—
Who mistake dawn's gentle blush
For the blaze of noon,
Declaring daylight moons as if secrets
Unveil to them alone.

In moonless nights, they summon the sun,
Their tongues dripping with claims of insight.
They speak of light they have not seen,
Whisper of realms they have not crossed—
As if the taste of honey could be known
By repeating only the name—
Honey, honey.

Awareness becomes their merchandise,
A glimmer borrowed from ancient pages—
Pages they cannot read with the heart.
For the heart's eyes must break open
To hold true light,
Yet theirs remain sealed, locked.

For fleeting gain, they don the dervish attire,
Adorning their words with the verses of masters,
But their breath carries no fragrance of that garden.
The thorns of false words tear at the roots of faith
As they preach to simple seekers,
Turning gold to dust in unsteady hands.
Those who come thirsty leave more parched,
For the well they draw from holds only brackish water.

Greed lines their robes like hidden threads,
Avarice stitched into every fold.
Lies polished to resemble truths,
Illusions gleaming in the guise of wisdom.
How far they drift from the rivers of silence,
Where the true dervish kneels to drink.

Pride is their guide; humility an exile.
Yet what mystic walks without bowing to the unseen?
What gnostic dares speak before emptying himself of self?
It is not the robe, the chant, nor the dance
That grants one the name of dervish.
Only the ripened, the broken-open—
The one who has died a thousand deaths within—
He alone may bear the weight of the teacher's cloak.

So often, those who wear the pheran of dervishes
Mistake fleeting hallucinations for the call of God.
A glimmer of strange light,
And they believe themselves chosen.
Filled with borrowed fire, they gather the naïve—
A congregation of raw minds and restless hearts.

They cry out in wild gatherings,
Rhythms spiraling into the night—
Chakris spun without remembrance,
A frenzy that knows not stillness.
These are not the dervishes whom God alone knows,
But echoes dressed in sacred garb,
Teachers of shallow yoga—
Not of the hidden path.

How can one be a dervish
Without the quiet where the soul bends inward?
Without the descent to the hidden well,
Where silence feeds the flame?
To turn away from the roar of ego,
To cradle the small voice below thought—
This is the dervish's way.

Power does not live in outstretched hands
But in the turning of the gaze within.
The inexhaustible fountain waits behind veils,
Where the self dissolves into prayer.
It is there the true dervish lays his head,
Sacrificing all that binds him to the world—
A silent offering at the altar of truth.

MyKoul