A Call To Prayer
A Call To Prayer
As steady as the cock crow,
Answering the call from Adam’s meadow,
All creations rise and proclaim,
The one and true glorious name,
Those who can hear listen,
The Greatest we serve is in heaven,
There is no other but the One,
From the fading of the moon to the rising of the sun,
His message passed through Ahmad,
Who taught us the way of salat,
For which we now humbly prepare,
In search of peace for those in despair,
God is the greatest, God is the greatest,
Let all creation answer the call and bear witness.
This poem draws from a number of sources encountered in the course so far. Primarily, it draws from the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. Every line of the Adhan as recited by Sunni Muslims is represented in this poem in some form or another. However in composing the poem, I was trying to express the idea that all of creation in a sense is a testament to Allah and express some form of his nature, drawn from the idea that nature itself is a sign or Ayah of Allah. Therefore rather than having the voice of someone reciting the Adhan, I tried to portray the idea that nature itself, as it proclaims Allah’s greatness should therefore call Muslims to pray before God. Furthermore, I also tried to use ideas drawn from other sources, such as the Miraj that describes Muhammad’s visit to heaven, in the first heaven, he meets Adam who is guarding the entrance to the garden, and in that garden there is also a cock that is the lord of all cocks such that when it crows, all the other cocks on earth follow it. The poem in its entirety therefore draws from hadith or stories about Muhammad, the Qu’ran, custom and Islamic theology in order to present the call to prayer in a more unified form that in itself portrays many elements of the ideas of Islam. I also tried to follow a rhyme scheme that is in the style of Arabic poetry in order to make it aesthetically pleasing, because sound is such a big part of the experience in Islam, I thought it important that this call to prayer be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional.