Oliver Khan - A Prayer at Hajj

In “A Prayer at Hajj”, poet Oliver Khan grants an Islamic perspective of God and pilgrimage, of purification. This three-part sequence poem allows the reader to journey along with the narrator during the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. In these lines, a reader can follow the trail from doubt and uncertainty, through struggle and prayer, before finding themselves beseeching Allah to be cleansed and clarified. Oliver told The Dewdrop that “A Prayer at Hajj” should be read aloud when slightly breathless.

A Prayer at Hajj

1. At Mina

Tonight, no place is left empty. Asleep,
my liquid —body is

constrained between a fat
Egyptian brother ———and a thin one.

How will I stand tomorrow
before the Infinite as finite in
everything except my flaws?

2. Walking to the Jamarat

My voice
————––a stale wind on the prairie–
makes no sound ——-in these mountains.
Do my feet refuse to go unless
caressed in satin and feathers?
—————————-The desert, shattered
land, thirsts for
my calluses ———–to bleed,
for my head ———–to bow,
and my tongue ——to count to
——————————-one
——–one hundred times
————————————–until I stow
my heedless heart, my headless mind
inside this string of beads.

3. At Arafah

I bring You my catalog
of deeds in which I exceeded
———————————————–all
the limits set by You
——————-and Your beloved.

A stew of my sins – mud
and —————sinew,
wit and ———excrement,
bone and ——vanity.

I have read ———–Your mercy
—have heard it
———-sung it
——————-all my hope
———-in the grandeur of
—————————-it. So now
——————-I test it. As if

You created me
and brought me here
to show the world how boundless,
effortless, and all-encompassing
Your mercy is. So I ask

You, Merciful You, You Pardoner, You Veiler,

by the love of Your beloved,
by the love of all
whom Your beloved loved
by —-the vow that I took
and broke and
broke and take.

I ask
that my manuscript
be white leaves,

that my stew
be pure water.

Fill me with Your mercy so that
no space is left empty.

Oliver Khan

Oliver Khan received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. His poems have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Pearl, Archipelago, Eleven Eleven Journal, Gargoyle, Zaum, and Great Coat. He practices law and lives with his family in Lombard, Illinois.