{"id":24,"date":"2012-03-03T08:57:08","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T08:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/stonework\/?p=24"},"modified":"2012-03-03T08:58:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T08:58:46","slug":"creative-response-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/2012\/03\/03\/creative-response-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem Dedicated to Muhammad (Week 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beautiful Light<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh God\u2019s beloved, the beautiful light<\/p>\n

Your golden flame shine through the darkness into<\/p>\n

My heart of glass, which without you, shines cold.<\/p>\n

You warm my soul from within<\/p>\n

Your compassion radiates throughout me<\/p>\n

And my body sings with love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You are a part of me, apart from me,<\/p>\n

A section of my soul never truly divorced<\/p>\n

But never fully mine to hold.<\/p>\n

Your love surrounds me, and though it may never be<\/p>\n

Only mine, in your love, my heart shatters<\/p>\n

And flows together with all that you are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I lie here, thinking of your warm love<\/p>\n

Wrapped around my rising chest<\/p>\n

Your golden flame radiating through my glass.<\/p>\n

In this moment, your love is not mine.<\/p>\n

Mine is yours, all yours, with all my being.<\/p>\n

And though I am only a stoneworker, what you are shapes my heart.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After reading about the different Urdu styles of poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad, I was inspired to try my own hand at a N\u2019at. N\u2019at poems are used to, \u201cfervently express [the poet\u2019s] powerful, all-consuming love and devotion\u201d to Muhammad (Asani 173). I chose to write a musaddas, a poem consisting of six-line stanzas, using the major theme of Muhammad as not only a shining, guiding light as often alluded to in the Qur\u2019an, but also a heart warming entity. Many poets use, \u201clanguage borrowed from the\u2026realm of human romance, while avoiding any explicit eroticism\u201d (Asani 174). Thus, I wrote my poem from the point of view of a lover, lying in bed, desperately missing her beloved. The beloved is in fact Muhammad who not only warms her heart, but also inspires her to be a better, more compassionate person. One of my most peripheral goals was to show that Muhammad is not only God\u2019s beloved, but the speaker\u2019s beloved as well. However, as a mere human, the speaker cannot claim Muhammad\u2019s love for herself. She can however dedicate her love entirely to him. My ultimate goal was to highlight the fact that there is only one ego: God\u2019s ego. Muhammad is the intercessor that allows individuals to fully take part in and understand love for Allah, an entity that is all encompassing, who\u2019s love is infinite. On a more technical note, I also included my takhallus or penname in the last line, as per tradition in N\u2019at poetry. Since my name is Mason, I alluded to it using my penname, \u201cstoneworker.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beautiful Light Oh God\u2019s beloved, the beautiful light Your golden flame shine through the darkness into My heart of glass, which without you, shines cold. You warm my soul from within Your compassion radiates throughout me And my body sings with love.   You are a part of me, apart from me, A section of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stonework\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}