Across the River: On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar

9. To Where The Cock-Crow I s Not Heard

9. To Where The Cock-Crow Is Not Heard To where the cock-crow is not heard To where the horn’s call is not known No matter how deeply we penetrate into them or ascend the ladder of their meanings through the levels of existence, neither form nor sign can satisfy us. We may see an angel in every cock crow, for as the Messenger said: ‘‘When you hear the crowing of cocks, ask for God’s Blessings for it has seen an angel. And when you hear the braying of donkeys, seek Refuge with God from Satan for their braying indicates that they have seen a devil.’’1 We may look with the eye of a cockerel at that being of light; but this is not enough for us to discover or find ourselves on the lost heights. Nothing that we attain from our discovery of the heavens and the earth as the image of our inner self, in which everything is arrayed between Spirit and flesh, is sufficient for us to discover that there is no self but the Self. We may be decisive on the Day: ‘‘Surely the Day of Decision is an appointed time, the day the Trumpet is blown, and you shall come in troops, and heaven is opened, and become gates, To Where the Cock-Crow Is Not Heard / 159 and the mountains are set in motion, and become a vapour.’’2 Then the Angel will blow upon the horn of which the Messenger said: ‘‘It is a horn of light that Seraphiel has put to his mouth.’’3 Angels, too, are of light; and hence the sounding of the horn emerges from the light that is shed, wakening us from the haziness of the waking state, somewhat less hazy sleep and still less hazy death. In this awakening, our human selves receive life from the Living in such a way that we can neither reject nor forget the gift. With the call of the horn, we rise on a day where it is entirely clear who is indebted and to Whom. It is a day in which the indebtedness that is the relationship between ourselves and our Lord is in the full light of His Face. On that day, nothing can escape into either obscurity or oblivion. And when everything has been extinguished so that the original meaning may be restored to all things and all may be justly weighed and differentiated into Heaven and Hell, new images will replace the old ones. All the gods will then deny that they could have any reality but the Reality. Each of us will be shown that they were names that we gave to mere things without regard for their subservience in the Kingdom of God, for there is nothing that is not the servant of God.4 There is not one image of God worthy of anything other than the Fire in which both the image and the place where it is preserved shall be destroyed. Beyond all languages and all that can be expressed within them, there is always Unity, one and the same, both near and far. All words are therefore waiting to be liberated, beyond all things, beyond all dualities , from meanings allotted to them without regard for their link with the Treasure. On the Day of Judgment every word will shake itself free of all the false meanings given to it by people who have allowed an image of God to be taken in His stead. They will reveal themselves as the names given by God to humankind so that they might be the debt owed by the indebted to Him to Whom it is due. Cockerels crow as long as there is disclosure of the Unseen, for His angels are with all things in existence; they are the executors of His will with which He discloses Himself to Himself: ‘‘With Him are the keys of the Unseen; none knows them but He. He knows what is 160 / Across Water: A Message on Realization in land and sea; not a leaf falls, but He knows it. Not a grain in the earth’s shadows, not a thing, fresh or withered, but it is in a Book Manifest.’’5 And since all things are created with Truth, His angels are with all things, for each thing manifest has something of life in it. Cockerels proclaim this at...