NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 18

Alone, a book by William C. Chittick absorbs me into Su?sm,
an Islamic esoteric tradition. What I like most about religions
is always the hidden esoteric part, not the orthodox popular
practice itself. Considering Moises de Leon writings about the
Kabala and Ibn Arabia from Murcia commentaries about the
Koran, Spain was a great center for both Islamic and Jewish
spiritual traditions. I imagine an ancient Berber bard reciting
in broken, newly acquired Arabic verses from the Koran and
for a moment it’s like he is canting over my shoulder. The bard
used to recite while he went about the task of counting the
grains of sand in the Sahara desert, thinking that the process
would save him from the turmoil of the inferno, but what more
inferno than to have to count the grains of sand in a dessert!
The Sahara has the size of the United States, like an ocean of
sand that runs across Africa. Quickly I catch myself in the
distractions of dreams and jump up to hold on to black ink of
letters, but once again I slither down the whiteness of the
sky page. I am reading a translated commentary by Ibn Arabia.
These are verses that were written from the right to the left.
As the translation writes everything in the opposite direction,
I become overwhelmed with the idea that I’m reading
everything backwards, upside down, understanding it in reverse.
Another wave of thought tells me that there must be a heaven
where there are no languages, where images are thoughts
until another ?re spirit intervenes. Reality cannot exist without
language, communication and the awareness of words that
name everything in it. You have to read the space between the
words, imagine the imagination of reality through interpretation
and intuition, a little bit like Chattick creates Ibn Arabia as
a life line with sentences that I drown in. Allah went over the
words of things with Adam…

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17

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The Sahara Desert.

The stars come out in the day,
which is what they say in Andalusia
when a pretty woman ?ower walks the street,
all to the whistles of an old cane
guiding with splashes of brandy
a black beret atop the head.
The Romance poet Becquer
saw her from his Sevilla balcony,
a fragrance only once, enough to last him
the entire Rimas of his youth,
spreading through all Iberian poetry,
even crossing the sea to make a Nicaraguan mulatto
rhyme his own Nicoya ?owers in Ruben Dario’s Rimas,
taking her to a banana frond bohio
above a ?eld of Cacao trees.
She will come to you this way
a ?ash of eyes piercing through chance
imagery of light,
the subtle sound of her voice,
maybe you do not hear it.
But be assured that Allah
has made for every man a woman,
in the reverse Arabic going
towards the origin and end of sentence.
It is useless to hide, it will ?nd you.
When in sea, nothing expecting,
it jumps like red ?sh and chains you, as, look
love comes this way when faces gather
in the proposal of just visiting
to see what you have read,
to enter history.
Even for others perceiving this love
melting like chocolate in hot milk,
shy and shame, the others watching
you think you are back home,
somewhere you have been,
but disappearing, remaking a lore
against the person you think you are.
Que pasa? I forgot the question mark
upside downat the beginning,
outside of the book the world has turned
black: ?gs and dates, bright like
stars in the sky twinkling, ?ash.
Twinkle twinkle little star, sweet and compelling.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

Mina’s mother lifts me out of the stupor, telling me something
in Arabic in such a casual manner as if she swears that I
understand her. I feel that she is o?ering me something, I tell
her oui, yes in French, which she understands. Then she departs
back into the kitchen and comes back with a small espresso
cup of black co?ee and some more almond cookies on a silver
tray. She leaves it next to my open book on the round co?ee
table. A butter?y enters the room. I pull my notebook out
and write something that it designed in the air:

9/9/10 6:38:30 PM