The Dryness And The Rain

(album: Brother, Sister - 2006)

First came a strong wind,
ripping off rooftops like bottlecaps
and bending lamp posts down in the ground.

then came a thunder shattering my windows
but you were not that strong wind or that might sound

You left the bar in shambles,
the rabbit hutch in ruins,
the split-rail fence splintered and the curtains torn.

all the cows out from the pastures trampling of the pumpkins
and the horses from their stable ambling in the corn

[foreign language chanting:]
Isa ruhu-lah 'alaihis-salat was-salam

I've flown unnoticed just behind you like an insect
And I've watched you like a falcon from a distance as you passed.

then swooped down to be nearer, to the traces of the footsteps
to pick the fallen grain from the dirt beneath the crooked grass.

And I'm gonna take that grain and I'm gonna crush it all together
into the flour of a bread as small and simple and sincere.

as when the dryness and the rain finally drink from one another
the gentle cup of mutually surrendered tears!

A fish swims in the sea
while the sea is in a certain sense,
contained within the fish!
Oh, what am I to think
of what the writing of a thousand lifetimes
could not explain
if all the forest trees were pens
and all the oceans ink?

[more foreign language chants:]
nastagh-firuka ya Hokan
ya Dhal-Jalah wal-Ikram
Isa ruhu-lah 'alaihis-salat was-salam
ya Halim, ya Qahhar
ya Muntaqim, ya Ghaffar!
la Ilaha ilallahu, Allahu Akbar!