Charles David Miller

“Oblation

"Your prayers are your light;
Your devotion is your strength;
Sleep is the enemy of both.
Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.
If you ignore it, if you waste it,
You will only turn to dust."
- Rabi'a

The terror that brings me to these words,
The horror and sickness I feel that words
Are not enough, the sin I make in speaking,
How can I rail against the pain without
Pain itself balling in the gut and forcing itself
through my throat? I’d fly in the wind
And merge with its velocity, drive my car
At the edge of the cliff and go over its rim,
If I thought I’d come closer to the pain
That they felt. The suffering of the child
In the suburban home, the tear in the eye
Of women and infants gathering food from ruins,
Can I sharpen the edge of my knife
On the rocks that smoke on the horizon,
Rasp its teeth on the steel girders
And console the sting of death?

Let me bring these sparks of confusion to the altar,
Set them on the pyre and merge into the light.
Then, then, will I find what I am looking for?
Find reality beyond time, the oneness that animates
All life, pulls together these fragments and ties
The knots in my muscles? I have nothing to offer
On the altar but this flesh, this desire of desire,
The lie and the fear that the flesh bears.

Then, then, will I find what I am looking for?
Find reality beyond time, the oneness that animates
All life, pulls together these fragments and ties
The knots in my muscles? I have nothing to offer
On the altar but this flesh, this desire of desire,
The lie and the fear that the flesh bears.”
― Charles David Miller