Resmi alam bersulam duka
Payah getir menguji diri
Tiap pahit ada manisnya
Harus sabar mengharung hari
Usah dinda bermuram sedih
Jangan pula berputus asa
Tuhan Agung Maha Pengasih
Pasti tiba Pengadilan-Nya.
#908 On The Morning Walk
To step outside before the world grows loud,
When air is clean and light is soft and new,
To walk beneath the white of drifting cloud,
And lift the eyes to unencumbered blue —
The neighbour nods, the stranger tips a smile,
Brief graces passed like coins along the street,
And something loosens, mile by easy mile,
The knot that sleep had failed to quite defeat.
The trees stand green and tall in morning light,
Indifferent to our burdens, blessedly so,
They ask for nothing, offer back the sight
Of something rooted, patient, set to grow.
So let the soul be walked back into bloom —
The morning sky, its ever-open room.
#907 On Weariness
Life rushes past me —
I stand still, learning to love,
tired, yet not yet lost.
#906 On Tiredness and the Moral Self
The day has wrung me hollow, dry, and spent,
Yet still I press against the fading light,
While Junayd’s words pursue me where I went:
This dunya’s tribulations are our right.
Around me, souls rush headlong, chasing still
The gilded noise of this world’s passing show,
While I am worn by some ungrasped goodwill,
A gentler self I ache to come to know.
To purge the arrogance that clouds my sight,
To love more truly, humbly, than before —
Such is the labour of the moral night,
The quiet war no battlefield makes sure.
Today I am discouraged, tired, worn —
Yet from such soil is moral goodness born.
#905 On Losing the Role to Find the Self
I grieve the self that hid behind the part —
the careful voice, the grace rehearsed and sure,
the borrowed manner passed itself for art,
the mask so worn I took it for my core.
But shame runs deep beneath the gilded show;
the Void has whispered what I would not hear —
that all this competence conceals the woe
of wounds I dressed in praise year after year.
So let the coming months unmake the frame,
let unbecoming be the work I do;
perhaps I built my roles to dodge my shame,
and called that refuge something that was true.
For what the role withheld, the loss restores —
the self was never built for gilded floors.
#904 On The Blank Spaces in Prayer
At every prayer’s close there waits an empty space,
A line where one beloved name must go —
I write yours there, and try to draw your face,
Though what remains of it, I barely know.
The features blur; I reach for what I knew —
Only your eyes stay vivid, close and clear;
I wonder in the silence if I, too,
Still find a place in all you hold most dear.
Forgive me where I failed, as I forgive —
Though how the heart was shattered, I recall;
Today I gather up the shards and live,
And reassemble, odd-shaped pieces, all.
Perhaps my fears have made a liar of me —
And love endures, as steadfast as the sea.
#903 On The Weariness of Becoming
The day gave oxygen, my spirit soared,
I thrived amongst the crowd, alive, awake —
Then came the evening, emptied and ignored,
Too drained to think, too spent for thinking’s sake.
I am a creature made for voices, rooms,
For human warmth and questions, give and take —
Yet every dawn some other sorrow looms,
And every choice another self must break.
The future calls across an unknown sea,
The weekend beckons like a distant shore;
My very human fears I cannot flee,
Though grace and equanimity I swore.
Between the man I am and what’s to be,
The miles of tiredness stretch — and still, I see.
#902 On The Narrowing of the World
We were the ones who would remake the earth,
Whose dreams spread wide as any morning sky —
Each decade stripped another hope of worth,
And still we did not learn to say goodbye.
The novel unbegun, the cause unmade,
The love that asked too much, the road not crossed —
Not slain by fate, but gently, softly frayed,
Until we woke and counted what we’d lost.
Yet here is Dorothea’s quiet art:
To find, within the compass of one day,
The letter written with a generous heart,
The small, ungathered life given away.
No marble tomb, no monument, no name —
The good we do in secret is our fame.
#901 On The Tears that Fall
Tears fall, unashamed —
proof the heart still knows to grieve,
proof it yet lives on.
#900 Tentang Alunan Alam
Perlahankanlah langkahmu
Ambil nafas dalam, satu persatu:
Dunia akan terus berputar ligat
Meski engkau asyik menaruh keringat
Usah terlalu terburu-buru
Kerna setiap satu alunan alam ini
Berjalan mengikut takdir Ilahi
Walau betapa kau berhempas pulas
Walau seberapa kau berlari pantas
Tuturan Tuhan takkan pernah lari
Mulianya manusia datang dari kesedaran
Bahwa alam dunia bergerak atas aturan
Tuhan.