Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

O nitwit body, how could you ever have lost

(as one might drop something in the street) your strength,

your paradisal face? When you had them

you acted ugly enough - now you ve grown ugly

better make at least your actions beautiful.

Your back is pale as winter. Once a peacock,

now a porcupine. If that beauty had really

meant something, it would never change, would it?

It only came on loan, it s been repossessed.

Ah corpus indelectable, don t weep, don t moan,

frail scallop on life s plumbless sea, brief breeze,

thin sail. Like a slick perfume salesman

(snotty and sexy) for a while you drenched your hair

in hyacinth and ambergris. Those hyacinthine locks

look now like frayed ropes, which you weave

upon Death s spindle. Yesterday fell

through a hole in your pocket, long before

you managed to get hold of tomorrow.

Tomorrow you ll pluck the bitter roses sown

- was it only yesterday? Fifty years from

cradle to grave along this ghoulhaunted highway:

the poor travel no worse than the rich -

no first-class compartment for Muslim or Jew.

However, there does come a fork in the road

- one way to heaven, one to hell. Fire

burnt in your gut and singed your heart

and offered you an excuse to tear up

the scroll of religion. Slave of instinct,

worshipper of fire (like a Magi) you whine

I don t know nothin , I didn t do it . . .

and really how could you be considered guilty

of your own murder? The ignoramus, devoid

of worship and devotion, expects to find in paradise

only good huntin and good fishin. You yourself

are fit - ugly devil - only to be bagged

gutted, hunted and roasted. O PROOF OF KHORASAN

the noise you make reaches every corner

of the earth, as if a boulder dropped

from heaven and shattered this great bowl

to splinters.