In Which You Tell Me You Have Set Islam Aside …

I used to dream, you say, that one day 
I would take a pilgrimage to Mecca, 

but I have given Islam up. 
I have taken my name off all the lists.

I no longer go to pray,
although I pray to Allah in my heart.

I thank him for the Qur’an, 
which I also have inside my heart.

Get knowledge and understanding, 
it instructs me.

And so I read and read and think,
and argue with myself, and others too, 

and have become a wiser person 
on account of it, 

which is why I have set Islam aside.
What point is there, 

I came to understand, 
in fighting with an enemy 

who has the upper hand?
What point in setting myself up 

for persecution by the guards and warden 
because I wear the Muslim cap 

and fast for Ramadan? 
A man must act upon his wisdom. 

So I have set aside the kufi. 
I do not abase myself.

I have light within me, though.
They cannot take that away.

… And I Drive Home in the Rain

The fallen sky laying itself out 
and laying itself out along the road

like grey-clad pilgrims
abasing themselves full-length

and rising,
and then the abasement,

and the rising up again,
end-to-ending themselves

like inchworms inching their way 
across grey countryside 

toward the holy city, 
pelted on, and blown up 

into a thousand falling fragments 
by lumbering grey trucks.

Gathering themselves together.
Shaking off the insult. 

Rising and abasing. 
Rising and abasing.

And being blessed for it.
And blessed for it.

That glittering
spinning of the wheels.