Seated at the window watching you
watch the visiting professor
lecture on Mohammed’s return
to Mecca, his faith a shield
more ornate than Achilles’,
I feel small and cross-threaded,
too misaligned to appreciate
intellectual grace you apply
to every formal situation.
No wonder you sit so
erect
in a crowd of slouchers while
a map of the Middle East glows
on the screen like a cross-section
of brain dissected from victims
of your grave universal love.
Mohammed understood politics,
his god, his fellow citizens
and applied himself so thoroughly
he remains more contemporary
than I am. Or so you told me
with a lilting of your brow
as we crossed Main Street the day
of the great April snowfall,
traffic hulking like cattle
and the sky a slab of cement.
Now you’re rapt in the lecture;
and although I’m half-distracted
by rain flirting at the window
the story of Mohammed’s success
in calming and reconciling
Mecca to the faith reminds me
how deeply the private jihad
arises in the folds of ego,
desperate to conquer the psyche.
In secret you’ve succeeded where
most have failed, the whorl of hair
at the nape of your neck as rich
and brambly a wilderness
as those on the fringe of desert
from which whole prophecies
have risen to wrestle the world.
