BROKEN WINGS
by
Gibran Khalil Gibran
1912
I was eighteen years of
age when love opened my eyes with its magic rays and touched my spirit
for the first time with its fiery fgingers, and Selma Karamy was the first
woman who awakened my spirit with her beauty and led me into the garden
of high affection, where days pass like dreams and nights like weddings.
Selma Karamy was the one who taught me to worship
beauty by the example of her own beauty and revealed to me the secret of
love by her affection; she was the one who first sang to me thepoetry of
real life.
very young man remembers his first love and tries
to recapture that strange hour, the memory of which changes his deepest
feeling and makes him so happy in spite of all the bitterness of its mystery.
n every young man's life there is a "Selma" who
appears to him suddenly while in the spring of life and transforms his
solitude into happy moments and fills the silence of his nights with music.
was deeply engrossed in thought and contemplation
and seeking to understand the meaning of nature and the revelation of books
and scriptures when I heard LOVE whispered into my ears through Selma's
lips. My life was a coma, empty like taht of Adam's in Paradise, when I
saw Selma standing before me like a column of light. She was the Eve of
my heart who filled it with secrets and
wonders and made me understand the meaning of
life.
he first Eve led Adam out of Paradise by her
own will, while Selma made me enter willingly into the paradise of pure
love and virtue by her sweetness and love; but what happened to the first
man also happened to me, and the firey word which chased Adam out of Paradise
was like the one which frightened me by its glittering edge and forced
me away from paradise of my love withougth having disobeyed any order or
tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree.
oday, after many years have passed, I have nothing
left out of that beautiful dream except painful memories flapping like
invisible wings around me, filling the depths of my heart with sorrow,
and bringing tears to my eyes; and my beloved, beautiful Selma, is dead
and nothing is left to ommemorate her except my broken heart and
tomb surrounded by cypress trees. That tomb and this heart are all that
is left to bear witness of Selma.
he silence that guards the tomb does not reveal
God's secret in the obscurity of the coffin, and the rustling of the branches
whose roots suck the body's elements do not tell the mysteries of the grave,
by the agonized sighs of my heart announce to the living the drama which
love, beauty, and death have performed.
h, friends of my youth who are scattered in the
city of Beirut, when you pass by tht cemetry near the pine forest, enter
it silently and walk slowly so the tramping of your feet will not distrub
the slumber of the dead, and stop humbly by Selma's tomb and greet the
earth that encloses her corpse and mention my name with deep sigh and say
to yourself, "here, all the hopes of Gibran, who is living as prisoner
of love beyond the seas, were buried. On this spot he lost his happiness,
drained
his tears, and forgot his smile." y that
tomb grows Gibrans' sorrow together with the cypress trees, and above the
tomb his spirit flickers every night commemorating Selma, joining the branches
of the trees in sorrowful wailing, mourning and lamenting the going of
Selma, who, yesterday was a beautiful tune on the lips of life and today
is a silent secret in the bosom of the earth.
h, comrades of my youth! I appeal to you in the
names of those virgins whom your hearts have loved, to lay a wreath of
flowers on the forsaken tomb of my belove, for the flowers you lay on Selma's
tomb are like falling drops of dew for the eyes of dawn on the leaves of
withering rose.
SILENT SORROW
My neighbors, you remember the dawn of youth
with pleasure and regret its
passing; but I remember it like a prisoner who
recalls the bars and shackles of his
jail. You speak of those years between infancy
and youth as a golden era free from
confinement and cares, but I call those years
an era of silent sorrow which
dropped as a seed into my heart and grew with
it and could find no outlet to the
world of Knowledge and wisdom until love came
and opened the heart's doors
and lighted its corners. Love provided me with
a tongue and tears. You people
remember the gardens and orchids and the meeting
places and street corners that
witnessed your games and heard your innocent
whispering; and I remember, too,
the beautiful spot in North Lebanon. Every time
I close my eyes I see those valleys
full of magic and dignity and those mountains
covered with glory and greatness
trying to reach the sky. Every time I shut my
ears to the clamour of the city I hear
the murmur of the rivulets and the rustling of
the branches. All those beauties
which I speak of now and which I long to see,
as a child longs for his mother's
breast, wounded my spirit, imprisoned in the
darkness of youth, as a falcon
suffers in its cage when it sees a flock of birds
flying freely in the spacious sky.
Those valleys and hills fired my imagination,
but bitter thoughts wove round my
heart a net of hopelessness.
verytime I went to the fields I returned disappointed,
without understanding the
cause of my disappointment. Every time I looked
at the grey sky I felt my heart
contract. Every time I heard the singing of the
birds and babbling of the spring I
suffered without understanding the reason for
my suffering. It is said that
unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness
makes him carefree. It
may be true among those who were born dead and
who exist like frozen corpses;
but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows
little is the most unfortunate
creature under the sun, because he is torn by
two forces. the first force elevates
him and shows him the beauty of existence through
a cloud of dreams; the second
ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes
with dust and overpowers him with
fears and darkness.
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong
fingers it grasps the heart and
makes it ache with sorrow. Silitude is the ally
of sorrow as well as a companion of
spiritual exaltation.
he boy's soul undergoing the buffeting of sorrow
is like a white lily just
unfolding. It trembles before the breeze and
opens its heart to day break and folds
its leaves back when the shadow of night comes.
If that boy does not have
diversion or friends or comapnions in his games
his life will be like a narrow
prison in which he sees nothing but spiderwebs
and hears nothing but the crawling
of insects.
hat sorrow which obsessed me during my youth
was not caused by lack of
amusement, because I could have had it; neither
from lack of friends, because I
could have found them. That sorrow was caused
by an inward ailment which
made me love solitude. It killed in me the inclination
for games and amusement. It
removed from my shoulders the wings of youth
and made me like a pong of water
between mountains which reflects in its calm
surface the shadows of ghosts and
the colors of clouds and trees, but cannot find
an outlet by which to pass singing
to the sea.
hus was my life before I attained the age of
eighteen. That year is like a
mountain peak in my life, for it awakened knowledge
in me and made me
understand the vicissitudes of mankind. In that
year I was reborn and unless a
person is born again his life will remain like
a blank sheet in the book of existence.
In that year, I saw the angels of heaven looking
at me through the eyes of a
beautiful woman. I also saw the devils of hell
raging in the heart of an evil man. He
who does not see the angels and devils in the
beauty and malice of life will be far
removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be
empty of affection.
THE HAND OF DESTINY
In the spring of the that wonderful year,
I was in Beirut. The gardens were full
of Nisan flowers and the earth was carpeted with
green grass, and like a secret of
earth revealed to Heaven. The orange trees and
apple trees, looking like houris or
brides sent by nature to inspire poets and excite
the imagination, were wearing
white garments of perfumed blossoms.
pring is beautiful everywhere, but it is most
beautiful in Lebanon. It is a
spirit that roams round the earth but hovers
over Lebanon, conversing with kings
and prophets, singing with the rives the songs
of solomon, and repeating with the
Holy Cedars of Lebanon the memory of ancient
glory. Beirut, free from the mud
of winter and the dust of summer, is like a bride
int he spring, or like amerjmaid
sitting by the side of a brook drying her smooth
skin inteh rays of the sun.
ne day, in the month of Nisan, I went to visit
a friend whose home was at
some distance from the glamorous city. As we
were conversing, a dignified man
of about sixty-five entered the house. As I rose
to greet him, my friend introduced
him to me as Farris Effandi Karamy and then gave
him my name with flattering
words. The old man looked at me a moment, touching
his forehead with the ends
of his fingers as if he were trying to regain
his memory. Then he smilingly
approached me saying, " You are the son of a
very dear friend of mine, and I am
happy to see that friend in your person."
uch affected by his words, I was attracted to
him like a bird whose instinct
leads him to his nest before the coming of the
tempest. As we sat down, he told
us about his friendship with my father, recalling
the time which they spent together.
An old man likes to return in memory to the days
of his youth like a strainger who
longs to go back to his own country. He delights
to tell stories of the past like a
poet who takes pleasure in reciting his best
poem. He lives spritually in the past
becaue the present passes swiftly, and the future
seems to him an approach to the
oblivion of the grave. An hour full of old memories
passed like the shadows of the
trees over the grass. When Farris Effandi started
to leave, he put his left hand on
my shoulder and shook my right hand, saying,
" I have not seen your father for
twenty years. I hope you will l take his place
in frequent visits to my house." I
promised gratefully to do my duty toward a dear
friend of my father.
hen the old man left the house, I asked my friend
to tell me more about him.
He said, "I do not know any other man in Beirut
whose wealth has made him kind
and whose kindness has made him wealty. He is
one of the few who come to this
world and leave it without harming any one, but
people of that kind are usually
miserable and oppressed because they are not
clever enough to save themselves
from the crookedness of others. Farris Effandi
has one daughter whose character
is similar to his and whose beauty and gracefulness
are beyond description, and
she will also be miserable because her father's
wealth is placing her already at the
edge of a horrible precipice."
s he uttered these words, I noticed that his
face clouded. Then he continued,
"Farris Effandi is a good old man with a noble
heart, but he lacks will power.
People lead him like a blind man. His daughter
obeys him in spite of her pride and
intelligence, and this is the secret which lurks
in the life of father and daughter.
This secret was discovered by an evil man who
is a bishop and whose wickedness
hides in the shadow of his Gospel. He makes the
people believe that hs is kind and
noble. He is the head of religion in this land
of the religions. The people obey and
worship him. he leads them like a flock of lambs
to the slaughter house. This
bishop has a nephew who is full of hatefulness
and corruption. The day will come
sooner or later when he will place his nephew
on his right and Farris Effandi's
daughter on this left, and, holding with his
evil hand the wreath of matrimony over
their heads, will tie a pure virgin to a filthy
degenerate, placing the heart of the day
in the bosom of the night.
hat is all I can tell you about Farris Effandi
and his daughter, so do not ask
me any more quesitons."
aying this, he turned his head toward the window
as if he were trying to
solve the problems of human existence by concentrating
on the beauty of the
universe.
s I left the house I told my friend that I was
going to visit Farris Effandi in a
few days for the purpose of fulfilling my promise
and for the sake of the
friendship which had joined him and my father.
He stared at me for a moment, and
I noticed a change in his expression as if my
few simple words had revealed to
him a new idea. Then he looked straight through
my eyes in a strange manner, a
look of love, mercy, and fear -- the look of
a prophet who foresees what no one
else can divine. Then his lips trembled a little,
but he said nothing when I started
towards the door. That strange look followed
me, the meaning of which I could
not understand until I grew up in the world of
experience, where hearts understand
each other intuitively and where spirits are
mature with knowledge.
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