(Warina Sushil A. Jukuy wrote this poem Friday night, 17 April 2020, for her younger sister, Wadrayna Jukuy – Dimafelix, a Muslim Tausug nurse-frontliner in New Jersey in the United States, who is now “slowly but surely on her 19th day recovering from her bout with COVID-19.” Inspired by a photo her sister shared from New Jersey, Warina wrote this piece)
A Muslim Tausug nurse’s contemplative view through a bedroom window in North Arlington while convalescing on her 19th day bout with COVID-19.
On the Mushaf I found Thee
(and the House of Praise that Awaits Me)
#Alhamdulillah by #Indahrens
On the mushaf I found thee
Oh how mutely I weep that Thou
remembered me
Long I have looked down
Yet long Thou has loved me.
My abject silhouette is limned on Thy page
cradled by this tempered lihal
I can but raise my head
Dumbfounded by Your Sublime Love.
The spirometer stood witness
as the tree outside outstretched
its spindly arms towards the Sky
in endless resonating Praise.
Oh how in contrast both in unison
exalted Thy Beneficence
Starkly one is free, the other rhymes Life itself
When priceless breath is withheld intermittently
I can only cling to Thee!
Never have I felt so close
So close that when I gasped
I found the key in more than forty one ways
Stupefied, I felt a million needle like pain
tormenting me from nowhere
In desperation, I have felt most
how much You love me,
how purifying is Thy Mercy, Ya Rabb!
Only then did I understand
pain itself is homeopathy,
lustrating and how effulgent
is Thy Light it struck me: it is between
the one beseeching and The Beseeched
in a timeless language only Thou understood.
I turn to You and Only You My Lord; humbly
I submit myself to Thee!
La ilaha illallah
Astaghfirullah al Azeem allazi la ilaha illa Huwal Hayyul-Qayyum wa atuubu ilaih
I seek the forgiveness of Allah the Mighty, Whom there is none worthy of worship except Him, The Living, The Eternal, and I repent unto Him
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Warina Sushil A. Jukuy is a Muslim Tausug of Lupah Sug in diaspora, displaced twice from Sulu to Davao City in 1974 and again since 2009. She thrives as a Peace Warrior using mortar and pestle, pen and ink, colors and voice, and keyboard).
