The Woman Who Said Yes and other poems

Salleh Ben Joned

The Woman Who Said Yes  

Trembling with terror, he reached for her skirt;  
The echo of the fierce voice in the cave 
Still thundered in the depths of his soul: 
"... from a clot of blood... the Most Beautiful..."  

Unable to recite these dreaded words, 
He was almost smothered in Its embrace.  
When down the hill he ran, it was everywhere;  
In front of him, above him—in his mind.  

"Cover me, Khatijah" Devil or angel?  
The sweat of terror drowned his certainty.  
"Get inside me! And you'll know for sure."  
He did — and terror burst into ecstasy.  

The apparition withdrew with angelic tact,  
His prophethood was confirmed in the act. 

— — 

Haram Scarum  

Drinking, gambling, lying, bribery  
— and all kinds of whoring too — 
all of them perfectly okay. 
And to hog it all’s not taboo. 

All sins of course; but nothing really 
a trip to the Holy of Holies  
cannot fix for Eternity: 
God blesses man’s enterprise. 

But that — that’s different, untouchable!  
We’re Moslems, and terribly Malay. 
Some things are just unmentionable; 
the rest are okay if we pray. 

We’ll go the whole hog if we must  
to redeem our pride as a race;  
like the giddy hare in a rut 
we’ll halal everything save that. 

It’s hogwash what those swines say:  
that we Bumis mount pig-a-back 
like a pack of boars hacking our way 
up the slippery slope of success. 

Our one dislike we have to keep  
to preserve our identity; 
so long as we hate pigs and pray,  
we’ll remain Moslem and Malay. 

— —

Adam's Dream in His  

As for poets, the erring follow them.
Has thou not seen how they stray in every valley, 
And they say that which they do not do or feel? 
Save those who believe and do good works, 
And remember God much …” 

- Quran, Surah 26, ‘The Poets’ (Translator M.M. Pickthall) 

We have not imparted to this Prophet the gift
of poetry, nor would poetry have suited the message 

-ibid, Surah xxxvi, ‘Ya sin … (O, though human being) 

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's  
affections and the truth of the Imagination – What the 
Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth ... The  
Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream – he  
awoke and found it truth. 

- John Keats 

The rib – there's part of the rub. 
did He, the Surgeon Divine, do it 
or didn't He? His telegraphic words 
as transmitted by His Last Messenger, 
that illiterate tongue of The Heart, 
inspired to speak in poetic 
non-poetry, say nothing about ribs 
or the rubs caused by a mere rib. 

Even she, supposed rib of his rib 
is dream desire sheer, 
more wondrous than daylight 
words could conceive, 
with nothing for a name even 
for one so dear.  

Yet in that nothing is everything;  
and in the denial of poetry's poetry,  
He dreamt His Word 
and woke up in our art 
and thus was born the truth 
in the fictive tongue of the heart 
of the mind of mere poets. 

After Adam dreamt his desire into being,  
wine she offered first. 
Then came that fruit. 
There lies the meaning: 
the dream within the dream within the dream – 
His in his in his: the fall 
into the valley, river and ocean of words; 
the flow of language's desire, 
its current, waves and undertow;  
and the metamorphosis of gnosis 
in the tongue of man into images,  
oceanically real, concretely sensed, 
conceived in the womb,  
bowels and liver of life.  

The rib's first, the earth's, and the fruit last;  
wine before fruit and from the fruits, 
the wine of life: the first becomes the last 
and in paradise again the first. 
Fullness is truly all; the ripeness  
of faith's freedom in fate,  
in heaven as on earth.  

Those profane, blasphemous drunks  
and true poets knew it:  
they too dreamt Adam's dream.  
Great dreamers they were in fact  
and in fiction – each one  
a believer in The Heart.  
In the visionary valley of verse they wandered,  
floating on wine, earthly and paradisal; 
artfully making their lucid way, submitting 
to the fall into the dark night 
of the heart's wakefulness 
towards what lies beyond poetry:  
the unutterable Reality 
Of the Dreamer of dreamers,  
the Maker of makers.  

From the womb of the supreme fiction 
bleeds the cycle of love and hate, life and death;  
the blessed curse of humankind,  
whose secret meanings as recited by poets 
Men and mullahs may misjudge 
but not the Poet of poets.   
Perhaps.  

— —

Note from Anna Salleh: 

‘Adam's Dream in His’ was first published in The New Straits Times in which Salleh specified the 'true poets' he refers to were Abu Nuwas, Hafiz and Omar K. This version of the poem is based on that which appeared in Adam's Dream (Silverfish Books, 2007).

— —

A new publication forthcoming November 2023 from Maya Press: