Cadence Lyrics

By: Sami Yusuf & Seyyed Hossein Nasr

On that moment before all moments,
On that morn before the world was born,
When we did Thy Lordship witness,
Seeing Thy Countenance, hearing Thy Command,
Uttering the yea that echoes forever within,
Did we the cadence of Divine Music hear.

In this lowly world I hear that Music near and far,
In the plucking of the oud and the tar,
In the drone of the sitar and the gong of the gamelan,
In the haunting melodies of those monks
Singing in unison of Thy Glory,
In the rhythmic drumbeats issuing from verdant forests,
And the shepherd’s ney breathing upon the hills,
In all those voices chanting of the love for Thee,
In all music that celebrates Thy Beauty inviolable,
I do hear that cadence of Divine Music,
And so in the chanting of the birds and the singing of the whales,
In the murmur of the wind through those majestic trees,
And even in the silent invocation of the mountains and the stars,
For is not the substance of all Thy creation,
But invocation of Thy Blessed Names
chanted in the cadence of Divine Music?

But most of all it is in solitude with Thee,
When I and Thou are alone in intimacy,
That I hear so clearly the cadence of that Music Divine
Which I heard on that pre-eternal dawn,
And which ceases not to resonate within,
Bearing witness to the reality of Thy Presence,
Echoing the cadence of that Divine Music,
Echoes from the myriads of created beings
That are but nothingness reflecting Thy Theophanies.

Let me be alone in Thy intimacy,
So as to hear again in the clearest of sounds,
The cadence of that Music Divine
Which I heard at the moment of encounter with Thy Face,
In that pre-eternal moment of creation,
The moment that is now and ever shall be the eternal now.