Calligraphy

I am grateful

for the Muslim mathematicians

who invented algebra

(an Arabic word),

and drew the first Zero,

whose radiant emptiness

exalts the One

by powers of ten,

and for Mansoor al Hallaj

who was tortured and burned

at the stake for ecstatically

humming the mantra,

"Ana'l Haqq! I Am Truth!"

bestowed on him by Shams,

the Guru of Rumi,

and I am grateful as well

for the humble nameless

artist of Isfahan

who wrote the entire

Qu'ran on a bird's egg

using for his brush a single

whisker from a newborn goat.

Yet how much more do I
give thanks to you, dear friend,

who with your gently

centered hairpin breath

pierces that shell

to suck out the unknown,

then through your most

delicate exhalation 

to inscribe the 114 Suras 

along with many others

not yet revealed (O calligraphy 

of illuminated nights,

O innumerable constellations,

sacred beasts of darkness

hurtling toward us to be born) 

yes, to inscribe them here,

on the inside of the egg!

 

I dreamed this poem, but could not convey it. So I will simply describe the dream, that I had on the eve of the Jewish New Year, at the New Moon of September, 2021. The dream began in anxiety about the world, yet I awoke in an ecstas

 

I was a captain U.S. Army Intelligence, sitting across the table in a dangerous game with someone holding an egg that had the entire Qu'ran inscribed on its shell. Very fragile. The world depended on not dropping and shattering it. I held out my hand to catch the egg, daring the other player to throw it. I knew the world's fate would rest on this delicate but desperate throw. He tossed the egg and I caught it gingerly. Then I knew what I had to do, but not why.

I had to inhale the uncreated unborn emptiness inside the egg through the tiny hole at the top, then blow a breath back into it. Which I did ever so gently, yet quickly with a one-pointed fiercely fine and focused exhalation. And with that breath, the whole scripture, and my own seeing of it, suddenly appeared INSIDE the egg, glittering like the dome of a great mosque or cathedral, radiant with all the stars and galaxies.

And the egg did not shatter, and the world was not destroyed. I awoke in great joy and it was clear then that our scriptures - the Torah, the Veda, the Qu'ran - are very dangerous and heavy when only inscribed on the outside. They could crush us. But when we breathe the holy writ inside, and let the law be inscribed on our hearts, earth becomes a paradise.

Happy New Year.