Daniel Abd al-Hayy Moore

From Silvers

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Visit American Muslim poet Daniel Abd al-Hayy Moore's website to read his bio

and read selections from his other work.

The Ramadan Sonnets

Click here for the pdf selections for our course readings.

Collages for the Ramadan Sonnets

"Vocalization"

During the dawn prayer, reciting

Qur'an out loud, I saw

how suited the mouth and voice are

to sound the sacred syllables,

wetness of throat and tongue, tongue

hitting teeth,

curling and rolling of

tongue, shape of cheeks, touch of

lips – and then how the

resonance from the heart, like the

core of an up-thrusting geyser, and

the darker recesses of the body-chambers,

how they shape the sounds that are made, and how then

around the sounds the body is shaped like a

reverberant protoplasm, tending to

refinement when the

words are refined. How

perfectly suited to sound the Qur'an the total human

organ is, the perfect

alive membrane, and how,

at lesser degree, sweetly enjoyable it is for the

physical mouth to say beautiful poetry, and how

resounding it is to speak true, well-shot words, how true speech is salutary to the

whole body, and at

lesser and lesser levels common speech, then

degrading speech, then

foul talk and nonsense, how

destructive to the

body they are, until the

grossness of the physical is at its

thickest and most

piglike at the

lowest level of talk, and how the

face and eyes and posture of the speaker

reflect what he or she

says.

16 Ramadan (morning)

Read "The Inevitable" and "Gastronomic Rigamarole"