A man from Lebanon
Nineteen centuries afterward
- Master, master singer,
- Master of words unspoken,
- Seven times was I born, and seven times have I died
- Since your last hasty visit and our brief welcome.
- And behold I live again,
- Remembering a day and a night among the hills,
- When your tide lifted us up.
- Thereafter many lands and many seas did I cross,
- And wherever I was led by saddle or sail
- Your name was prayer or argument.
- Men would bless you or curse you;
- The curse, a protest against failure,
- The blessing, a hymn of the hunter
- Who comes back from the hills
- With provision for his mate.
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- Your friends are yet with us for comfort and support,
- And your enemies also, for strength and assurance.
- Your mother is with us;
- I have beheld the sheen of her face in the countenance of all mothers;
- Her hand rocks cradles with gentleness,
- Her hand folds shrouds with tenderness.
- And Mary Magdalen is yet in our midst,
- She who drank the vinegar of life, and then its wine.
- And Judas, the man of pain and small ambitions,
- He too walks the earth;
- Even now he preys upon himself when his hunger find naught else,
- And seeks his larger self in self-destruction.
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- And John, he whose youth loved beauty, is here,
- And he sings though unheeded.
- And Simon Peter the impetuous, who denied you that he might live longer for you,
- He too sits by our fire.
- He may deny you again ere the dawn of another day,
- Yet he would be crucified for your purpose, and deem himself unworthy of the honor.
- And Caiaphas and Annas still live their day,
- And judge the guilty and the innocent.
- They sleep upon their feathered bed
- Whilst he whom they have judged is whipped with the rods.
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- And the woman who was taken in adultery,
- She too walks the streets of our cities,
- And hungers for bread not yet baked,
- And she is alone in an empty house.
- And Pontius Pilatus is here also:
- He stands in awe before you,
- And still questions you,
- But he dares not risk his station or defy an alien race;
- And he is still washing his hands.
- Even now Jerusalem holds the basin and Rome the ewer,
- And betwixt the two thousand thousand hands would be washed to whiteness.
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- Master, Master Poet,
- Master of words sung and spoken,
- They have builded temples to house your name,
- And upon every height they have raised your cross,
- A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet,
- But not unto your joy.
- Your joy is a hill beyond their vision,
- And it does not comfort them.
- They would honor the man unknown to them.
- And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose kindliness is like their own kindliness,
- A god whose love is like their own love,
- And whose mercy is in their own mercy?
- They honor not the man, the living man,
- The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun
- With eyelids unquivering.
- Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.
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- They would be unknown, walking in the procession of the unknown.
- They would bear sorrow, their sorrow,
- And they would not find comfort in your joy.
- Their aching heart seeks not consolation in your words and the song thereof.
- And their pain, silent and unshapen,
- Makes them creatures lonely and unvisited.
- Though hemmed about my kin and kind,
- They live in fear, uncomraded;
- Yet they would not be alone.
- They would bend eastward when the west wind blows.
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- They call you king,
- And they would be in your court.
- They pronounce you the Messiah,
- And they would themselves be anointed with the holy oil.
- Yea, they would live upon your life.
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- Master, Master Singer,
- Your tears were like the showers of May,
- And your laughter like the waves of the white sea.
- When you spoke your words were the far-off whisper of their lips when those lips should be kindled with fire;
- You laughed for the marrow in their bones that was not yet ready for laughter;
- And you wept for their eyes that yet were dry.
- Your voice fathered their thoughts and their understanding.
- Your voice mothered their words and their breath.
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- Seven times was I born and seven times have I died,
- And now I live again, and I behold you,
- The fighter among fighters,
- The poet of poets
- King above all kings,
- A man half-naked with your road-fellows.
- Every day the bishop bends down his head
- When he pronounces your name.
- And every day the beggars say:
- "For Jesus' sake
- Give us a penny to buy bread."
- We call upon each other,
- But in truth we call upon you,
- Like the flood tide in the spring of our want and desire,
- And when our autumn comes, like the ebb tide.
- High or low, your name is upon our lips,
- The Master of infinite compassion.
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- Master, Master of our lonely hours,
- Here and there, betwixt the cradle and the coffin, I meet your silent brothers,
- The free men, unshackled,
- Sons of your mother earth and space.
- They are like the birds of the sky,
- And like the lilies of the field.
- They live your life and think your thoughts,
- And they echo your song.
- But they are empty-handed,
- And they are not crucified with the great crucifixion,
- And therein is their pain.
- The world crucifies them every day,
- But only in little ways.
- The sky is not shaken,
- And the earth travails not with her dead.
- They are crucified and there is none to witness their agony.
- They turn their face to right and left
- And find not one to promise them a station in his kingdom.
- Yet they would be crucified again and yet again,
- That your God may be their God,
- And your Father their Father.
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- Master, Master Lover,
- The Princess awaits your coming in her fragrant chamber,
- And the married unmarried woman in her cage;
- The harlot who seeks bread in the streets of her shame,
- And the nun in her cloister who has no husband;
- The childless woman too at her window,
- Where frost designs the forest on the pane,
- She finds you in that symmetry,
- And she would mother you, and be comforted.
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- Master, Master Poet,
- Master of our silent desires,
- The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
- But it burns not with your song.
- The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight,
- But it rises not from its seat
- To scale the ridges of your hills.
- Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn
- Which is his greater dream.
- He would see with your vision,
- But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne.
- Yet many have been enthroned inn your name
- And mitred with your power,
- And have turned your golden visit
- Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand.
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- Master, Master of Light,
- Whose eye dwells in the seeking fingers of the blind,
- You are still despised and mocked,
- A man too weak and infirm to be God,
- A God too much man to call forth adoration.
- Their mass and their hymn,
- Their sacrament and their rosary, are for their imprisoned self.
- You are their yet distant self, their far-off cry, and their passion.
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- But Master, Sky-heart, Knight of our fairer dream,
- You do still tread this day;
- Nor bows nor spears shall stay your steps.
- You walk through all our arrows.
- You smile down upon us,
- And though you are the youngest of us all
- You father us all.
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- Poet, Singer, Great Heart,
- May our God bless your name,
- And the womb that held you, and the breasts that gave you milk.
- And may God forgive us all.
- --oOo-- -
Khalil Gibran
Introductory biography
Spirits Rebellious
The Broken Wings
A Tear and a Smile
The Madman
The Forerunner
The Prophet
The New Frontier
Sand and Foam
Jesus, The Son Of Man
James the son of Zebedee
Anna the mother of Mary
Assaph called the Orator of Tyre
Mary Magdalen
Philemon, a Greek Apothecary
Simon who was called Peter
Caiaphas
Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward
Rafca
A Persian Philosopher in Damascus
David, one of his followers
Luke
Matthew
John the son of Zebedee
A young priest of Capernaum
A rich levi in the neighborhood of the Nazarene
A shepherd in South Lebanon
John the Baptist
Joseph of Arimathea
Nathaniel
Saba of Antioch
Salome to a woman friend
Rachael, a woman disciple
Cleopas of Bethroune
Naaman of the Gadarenes
Thomas
Elmadam the Logician
One of the Mary's
Rumanous, a Greek poet
Levi, a disciple
A widow in Galilee
Judas the cousin of Jesus
The man from the desert
Peter
Melachi of Babylon, an astronomer
A philosopher
Uriah, an old man of Nazareth
Nicodemus the poet
Joseph of Arimathea
Georgus of Beirut
Mary Magdalen
Jotham of Nazareth to a Roman
Ephraim of Jericho
Barca, a merchant of Tyre
Phumiah, the high Priestess of Sidon
Benjamin the scribe
Zacchaeus
Hannah of Bethsaida
Manasseh
Jephtha of Caesarea
John the beloved disciple
Mannus the Pompeiian, to a Greek
Pontius Pilatus
Bartholomew in Ephesus
Matthew
Andrew on prostitutes
A rich man on possessions
John at Patmos
Peter on the neighbor
A cobbler in Jerusalem
Suzannah of Nazareth
Joseph surnamed Justus
Philip
Birbarah of Yammouni
Pilate's wife to a Roman lady
A man outside of Jerusalem
Sarkis, an old Greek shepherd
Annas the high priest
A woman, one of Mary's neighbors
Ahaz the portly
Barabbas
Claudius a Roman sentinel
James the brother of the Lord
Simon the Cyrene
Cyborea
The woman in Byblos
Mary Magdalen thirty years later
A man from Lebanon
The Earth Gods
The Wanderer
Al-Nay
The Garden of the Prophet
Lazarus and His Beloved
Satan
My Countrymen
I Believe In You
Your Thought And Mine
You Have Your Lebanon
History and the Nation
The Vision
Visual art