Kahlil Gibran’s book of wisdom, The Prophet is a lyrical examination of the elements of human life: truth, faith, beauty, and time. It is unusually wise and sounds to us like a refracted voice from a long distant past, with an eloquence that startles and soothes us. Writing in 1923, Gibran could have just as convincingly been writing in 1323. There is a softness to his tone but his words are arresting for their purity and originality of thought. His ideas reach us now with an unparalleled compassion and generosity.
Gibran was a Lebanese writer, and although he rejected the claim, many saw him as a philosopher, a reincarnated seer. The Prophet remains one of the bestselling books of all time. Gibran was indebted to the naturalist, romantic vision of poets William Blake and Walt Whitman and his own poetry is infused with a reverence for forces unseen. Within his poetry we encounter a harmony and a weightlessness that are oft-overlooked in the workaday world. His antidote to the problems of the heart? A certain expansiveness, a willingness of spirit, the courage to set down our masks and our empty defenses.
Inspired by Gibran’s vital insights, here are some disjointed, deconstructed bits of verse and prose. I recommend reading the book in its entirety to gain an appreciation for the intricacies and splendor of the original text.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city
The gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea
Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets
For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mold
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.
The seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter and weep, but not all of your tears
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving
But let there be space in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music
The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow
And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full the thirst that is unquenchable?
Let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite
And you have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary
The wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass. And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song
And if your grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
You are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy
For even as you have homecomings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever-distant and alone
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain
Comfort makes puppets of your larger desires
The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of the night
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind
When his work was done he laughed in the forest
They too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun
But you who can walk facing the sun, what images on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weather vane shall direct your course?
But who shall command the skylark not to sing?
And how shall you rise above your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? In truth, that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed
All things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart.
Your heart knows in silence the secrets of the days and the nights
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes…for self is a sea boundless and measureless
The soul walks upon all paths
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly
The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space
In some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest
And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night or the firefly the stars?
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being
Pleasure is a freedom song: but it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit. It is a depth calling unto a height, but it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing, but it is not space encompassed.
But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter it take with you your all
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides?
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and scattered
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam
Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal and who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
It was but yesterday we met in a dream
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind
And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky
