Musa the Tailor

(Editor's note: We begin this fall 2010 edition with this beautiful poem celebrating the feast of Francis of Assisi with a remembrance of his union with Clare - the union of the heart's enclosure and our response in the world, the earliest Franciscan rule.)

___________

The Ordinance

Runic fibres run, an echelon of intonation,

Through iconography refracted, Left and Right.

The ordinance of poverty, angelic, striking

Wayward hearts, hateful babble run through

And silenced by the enclosure of Clare’s women.

A cradle for infants, a sickness for tyrants,

The wanderer’s holy weaponry sings outward,

Through soil, upward, into branch, explosions of leaf and flower,

And then a harvest of fruit, falling, unseen: this darkened sanctuary.

Leave the sheikhs and scientists to their God delusion,

Leave them to their claps and whistles,

For the ordinance demands a chastity greater than that foul lapse

For the ordinance demands the truth function, the verdant Joy.

And so this midnight, I reflect that his charity was orbic universe in miniature,

Replicated by diamond response.

But then I am interrupted, my daughters’ cat sounds at the window

Asking to be let out into night air:

A kaleidoscope of cat and Clare and Kingdom.

 Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

Copyright by Musa 

Biography

Musa is both a Tailor and a professor of Computational Logic with the University of London. He lives in London with his wife, two daughters and their cat. His ongoing reflections on Sufism, reality and language can be found at The Tailor’s Doctrine thegoodgarment.wordpress.com and at the tailorofgoodgarment’s youtube channel. Be ready for a wild and wonderful romp in the hermeneutics of divine love.