5 Ramadan

  RAMDAN HOUSE GUEST

              "Fasting is Mine.”

                    - Hadith Qudsi

 Ramadan has come to live with us.
 It is God's private apartments
    moved into our house
      and taking over.
 Where doors were
   are now entranceways into His Garden.
 Where windows were
  are continuous waterfalls. Abundance in the

 dryness. Hidden in the dust:
    clusters of roses. Sprung from our
 footsteps: ascents. Climbs past the
 usual dimensions: the usual
 ticking clock in the antechamber. The ancient
 mahogany piano has become
   rock-crystal, playing only
     God's music on
        silent keys. There is a

 haunting rise and fall of
   distant melody come
      close to the inner car, come
 closer even than our
  own physicality. a

 sound more essential than the
  marrow of our bones or the
 enormous sailing surface of the
    corpuscles of our blood, that is

 His interconnecting rooms leading always past the
 closed door of His Presence, the

 open hallways of approach the
 retreating audience halls where
    attendants move with
       melodious precision. and speak in an
 undertone of avalanche, words of
 rainforests keeping earth's atmosphere filled with
    breathable air, deeps of the
   nearest ocean where various
        killer whales congregate in
        affable groups.

 The earth is an outdoor amphitheater of
   affable groups, and time a

 shudder of water across fans of spray at the
   source of the cascade of all
        creaturely manifestation.

 When the rooms are filled with the yearly fast
 the most geographical distances are drawn near,
 Watutsi warriors in tiger pelts arrive in silent droves,
 desert men in blazing white burnooses slide
   down off their donkeys and
       come in, Siamese ladies in
 straight batik skirts stand in
       angular poses to the
 click of passing birds, and a

 white wind sweeps across everything that
 inhales or intakes, exhales or
   digests. The very air becomes a

 stomach turned inside-out in which
 the sun and all her
     planets turn in
       wide swinging arcs in the

 tonal soup of darkness.

 God says, "Fasting is Mine."

 Because He alone knows its
    dimensions. It

 contains each ant and
 microbe in the
 drama of being a creature.

 Ramadan has moved
   into the earth
 like a different sky
     settling down on the
       same dunes.

 For a month the feast takes place in a
    heavenly dimension. Trays are

 brought in from

 other atmospheres.

 Our house is His. Its guests
   belong to Him. The
     repast is His, the

 withholding and giving is