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The pre-dawn wind billowed my blanket, and I awoke.
And the dust that pillowed my head entreatingly spoke:
Do not brush me from your hair till you reach your Master’s door,
So that at his feet’s touch I may rise and be dust no more.
He may even (his grace has no limits) give me birth as a rose
To shed my petals along the path where he walks at dayclose.
And (his grace is limitless and covers the absurd)
In God’s next advent I may be a praise-throated bird.
Do not laugh (for his grace is endless) if I speak again—
Next time after that I may reach creation’s goal of man-pain.
I thought, indeed fancy is often stranger than dreaming.
The next time I woke, the sun’s flag on the hilltop was streaming.
I arose and went to the Master’s house. Arrived there
He at once ordered me to shake the dust from my hair.
Isaiah 29:4 …”thy speech shall whisper out of the dust”
Through the fanciful imagining of the poem emerges the wonder of the links between all creation and the marvels of transformation and evolving, as the quest for the Beloved animates even dust.
But what is the significance of the Master telling him to shake the dust from his hair?
Is it that when as human we reach the house of the Master we can stand upright before the risen sun? It is not the time for longings for transformation nor for the fancies of the imagination about the future, it is dazzling presence.
At any rate the message is that all happens by His will, not by our own achieving.