ISSAH AND THE FOOLS

Issah the healer

(To him all praise)

Had the Word from God

Which was able to raise

The dead and breathe

Life into a wraith

Not to crowd the planet

But to bring us to faith

In the living God. But he

Walked with men who were

Self-seeking in their depth

And deeply insincere

They pressed him for the formula

They begged him for the word

The mantra that would raise the dead

And by Him be heard

So Issah in his innocence

Whispered it to those

Jackals who were present

When Lazarus arose

And gave to all of us,

The doubting human race,

Faith in the eternal

Life, faith in Allah’s grace.

These jackals, jubilating, went

Through a desert full of stones

And came across a scattered pile

Of whitened, sun-bleached bones.

When one of these self-seekers

More foolish than the rest

Thought he’d put the formula

And Issah to the test.

He uttered the dreaded word of life

While facing to the East

And from the bones there came alive

A predatory beast,

Who ate the entire company

The miracle-maker too

Now Rumi that’s the story

But the moral must come through.

Issah was no magician

His miracles weren’t magic

The fools who deny Allah

Their ends will be farcical, tragic.