Across the River: On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar

12. A Hundred Winters

12. A Hundred Winters It is a hundred winters wide It is a thousand summers deep We are situated in time. The blade of existence that never evades the hour is revealed in that ‘‘being’’ in time. Our reality is in that eternal moment at which existence, ever in flux, flows in as incessant manifestation and simultaneously flows out again. The blade of time is crueler than the cutting edge of a sword. Everything remains in it, everything flees to it and from it. Our ‘‘now’’ differentiates our self into its various directions—up and down, right and left, forward and back. In every one of our states, which is ‘‘now’’ in a specific place, we have the memory of the past and a preconception of the future. However much we cover with this memory, and regardless of whether it is just a little or a great deal, all that is ours manifests Essence. Whatever comes to us from the past flows away from us into the future. All the waters present at our level of existence are flowing in and out but are ever at that level. As we walk the earth, we come to 178 / Across Water: A Message on Realization the riverbanks; walking arrogantly or humbly, we come to the Riverbank . God tells us: ‘‘Turn not thy cheek away from men in scorn, and walk not in the earth exultantly; God loves not any man proud and boastful. Be modest in thy walk, and lower thy voice; the most hideous of voices is the ass’s.’’1 God orders those who surrender to walk the earth humbly. They are there, in existence between the two banks, above the depths of the Vale and below the sublime Heights. They came there from preexistence , in which they swore to God by testifying that He was their Lord.2 This they could testify from their center by being illumined by the shining of the light which is the praise of God.3 This oath in preexistence includes trust as their link with God as the Faithful and the acceptance of the Light of the Praised as the first of those who surrender.4 And then they came into preexistence with this pledge of the covenant in existence. Whence they came, there they return, to set forth the reckoning on the Day of Reckoning for their attitude toward the original oath during the trials it underwent in existence. In this way, our being in the world is a relationship with the River and its banks. When we are on the banks, we may move upstream toward the source or downstream toward the mouth of the River. The source and the mouth of the River are the signs of our beginning and our end. But we cannot cross the River except by changing the way we cross. We can wade through it or swim across it, cross by ford, by bridge, or by boat. And once we have crossed, we are on the far bank, on the other side. The land we have reached is that other side; and we are strangers there. We came into this world from some other side that seems to us in our mind’s eye to be nothingness or obscurity. Our yearning to find ourselves in the hazy regions of our origins or our potential is what urges us on toward the edge of the world; but it constantly eludes us. We want the other bank, the world beyond the limits of everything we experience in our ‘‘now.’’ We want the certainty of death to be transformed into the same as our now and to find ourselves with pure consciousness on the other side, in another world. A Hundred Winters / 179 The earth is the other side of the heavens. The water of earthly rivers comes from the skies and rises to them. They are all earthly rivers of outflow and inflow on the surface of a single level of existence ; outflows of the River that flows from the heavens and that spans the ocean depths and the heights of heaven. It is the Flow by which Essence discloses itself, from God and Intellect to nothingness. We receive this water that is sent down in our own measure: ‘‘He sends down out of heaven water, and the wadis flow each in its measure , and the torrent carries a swelling scum...