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Poetry

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying?

by Zahra Rashid

What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying?
I died as lifeless matter and became growing vegetation,
then I died as a plant and reached animality.
I died as an animal and became human
What do I have to fear, have I ever diminished by dying?
From here to there, from this footprint in the sand to the next wave
Unfolding, unravelling the paradox of being
matter; animate and inanimate – flesh, soil, and blood
twirling around this mystery, weaving stories as they spin,

At the next encounter, I will leave human-ness
So that I may bring wings and a head from the angels
Even as an angel, I should keep searching and striving:
“Everything perishes except His Face.” (28:88)
Stories begin, fade and end,
The twirling remains as a dance
Flapping wings of angels may recede,
but rings clear the symphony of characters, plots, and the Unseen.

Another time, I will be sacrificed as an angel,
then I will become what cannot be fathomed
Thus, I will become Nothing, which like a musical organ
declares: “To Him we Return.” (2:156)
Die before you die, as they say,
Die to the wonders of non-being!
As the vestiges of a life annihilate and disintegrate
an infant life emerges, bawling and screaming: “You are dying, and they are too.” (39:30)

Zahra Rashid is a doctoral student at U.C. Berkeley working on Sufi philosophy. Her writings may be accessed at philpeople.org/profiles/zahra-rashid/publications.

• This piece follows the tradition of taḍmin in Persian Sufi poetry; a poetic device which takes a quote from another poet’s poetry and inserts it in an author’s original work. This form not only involves its readers’ imaginations and ideas through intertextuality, but also opens the possibilities of creative engagement with the original text, whereby new meanings and references may be drawn from an original work. The words in italics are my own translation of verses from Rumi’s poem # 187 in Mathnawi Ma’anwi, Vol. 3, and the rest is my own dialogue with it. The quotations are from the Qur’an, followed by chapter and verse citations in brackets.