Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (56 page)

The Speechless Animal

In the glance of the speechless animal there is a discourse that only the soul of the wise can really understand
.

A
N
I
NDIAN
P
OET

In the twilight of a beautiful day, when fancy seized upon my mind, I passed by the edge of the city and tarried before the wreck of an abandoned house of which only rubble was left.

In the rubble I saw a dog lying upon dirt and ashes. Sores covered his skin, and sickness racked his feeble body. Staring now and then at the setting sun, his sorrowful eyes expressed humiliation, despair, and misery.

I walked slowly toward him wishing that I knew animal speech so that I might console him with my sympathy. But my approach only terrified him, and he tried to rise on his palsied legs. Falling, he turned a look on me in which helpless wrath was mingled with supplication. In that glance was speech more lucid than man's and more moving than a woman's tears. This is what I understood him to say:

“Man, I have suffered through illness caused by your brutality and persecution.

“I have run from your bruising foot and taken refuge here, for dust and ashes are gentler than man's heart, these ruins less melancholy than the soul of man. Begone, you intruder from the world of misrule and injustice.

“I am a miserable creature who served the son of Adam with faith and loyalty. I was man's faithful companion. I guarded him day and night. I grieved during his absence and welcomed him with joy upon his return. I was contented with the crumbs that fell from his board, and happy with the bones that his teeth had stripped. But when I grew old and ill, he drove me from his home and left me to merciless boys of the alleys.

“Oh son of Adam, I see the similarity between me and your fellow men when age disables them. There are soldiers who fought for their country when they were in the prime of life, and who later tilled its soil. But now that the winter of their life has come and they are useful no longer, they are cast aside.”

“I also see a resemblance between my lot and that of a woman who, during the days of her lovely maidenhood enlivened the heart of a young man; and who then, as a mother, devoted her life to her children. But now, grown old, she is ignored and avoided. How oppressive you are, son of Adam, and how cruel!”

Thus spoke the speechless animal whom my heart had understood.

Poets and Poems

If my fellow poets had imagined that the necklaces of verses they composed, and the stanzas whose meters they had strengthened and joined together, would some day become reins to hold back talent, they would have torn up their manuscripts.

If Al-Mutanabbi,
*
the prophet, had prophesied, and Al-Farid,
**
the seer, had foreseen that what they had written would become a source for the barren and a forced guide to our poets of today, they would have poured out their inks in the wells of Oblivion, and broken their quills with the hands of Negligence.

If the spirits of Homer, Virgil, Al-Maary,
***
and Milton had known that poetry would become a lapdog of the rich, they would have foresaken a world in which this could occur.

I grieve to hear the language.of the spirits prattled by the tongues of the ignorant. It slays my soul to see the wine of the muses flow over the pens of the pretenders.

Neither am I found alone in the vale of Resentment. Say that I am one of the many who see the frog puffed up to imitate the buffalo.

Poetry, my dear friends, is a sacred incarnation of a smile. Poetry is a sigh that dries the tears. Poetry is a spirit who dwells in the soul, whose nourishment is the heart, whose wine is affection. Poetry that comes not in this form is a false messiah.

Oh spirits of the poets, who watch over us from the heaven of Eternity, we go to the altars you have adorned with the pearls of your thoughts and the gems of your souls because we are oppressed by the clang of steel and the clamor of factories. Therefore our poems are as heavy as freight trains and as annoying as steam whistles.

And you, the real poets, forgive us. We belong in the New World where men run after worldly goods; and poetry, too, is a commodity today, and not a breath of immortality.

*
The word Al-Mutanabbi means the one who divines or predicts. He was a famous Arabian poet whose poems were translated into several languages.

**
An outstanding Arabian poet and philosopher.

***
A ninth century Arabian poet who became blind at the age of four and was looked upon as a genius.

Among the Ruins

The moon dropped its gauzy veil over the gardens of the City of the Sun,
*
and silence swathed all beings. The fallen palaces looked menacing, like sneering monsters.

At that hour two phantoms, like vapor rising from the blue water of a lake, sat on a marble pillar pondering the scene which was like a realm of magic. One lifted his head, and with a voice that set echoes reverberating, said:”

“These are the remnants of temples I built for you, my beloved, and this is the rubble of a palace I erected for your enjoyment. Nothing else remains to tell the nations of the glory to which I devoted my life, and of the pomp for which I exploited the weak.

“Think and ponder, my beloved, upon the elements that triumphed over my city, and upon Time that thus belittled my efforts.

“Oblivion has submerged the empire I established, and naught is left save atoms of Jove which your beauty has created, and effects of beauty which your love has enlivened.

“I erected a temple in Jerusalem and the priests sanctified it, but time has destroyed it. But in my heart the altar I built for Love was consecrated by God and sustained against the powers of destruction.

“Men said of me, ‘What a wise king he is!' The angels said, ‘How trifling is his wisdom.' But the angels rejoiced when I found you, my beloved, and sang for you the song of Love and longing; though men heard no notes of my hymn….

“The days of my reign were barriers to my understanding of Love and of the beauty of life, but when I saw you, Love awoke and demolished those barriers, and I lamented the life I spent considering everything under the sun as vanity.

“As Love enlightened me, I became humble both before the tribes who had feared my military might and before my own people.

“But when death came, it buried my deadly weapons in earth and carried my love to God.”

And the other phantom said, “As the flower obtains life and aromatic scent from earth, so the soul extracts wisdom and strength from the weakness and errors of matter.”

Then the two fused into one and walked away, saying:

“Eternity keeps naught but Love,
For Love is like Eternity.”

*
The ruined City of Baalbek.

At the Door of the Temple