Broken Wings

by Kahlil Gibran

“If any of you would bring judgment on the unfaithful wife, let him also weigh the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.”

I was 18 when love opened my eyes with its enchanted rays and touched my heart for the first time with its blazing fingertips.

Love freed my tongue so that it spoke, separated my eyelids so that they wept, and opened up my throat so that it sighed and complained.

If tragedy does not ensnare a man, if affliction does not agitate him, if love does not lay him down in the cradle of dreams, then his life is like a blank, white page in the book of existence.

For whoever cannot see angels and demons in the beautiful and hateful things of life, his heart remains remote from knowledge, and his soul is empty of emotion.

Youth possesses wings feathered with poetry and sinews rippling with vision, whereby it carries the young aloft, beyond the clouds. There they see the cosmos flooded with prismatic light rays like the colors of the rainbow and hear life chanting anthems of glory and majesty. But before long those lyrical wings are shredded by the storms of experience, and the plummet to the world of reality. The world of reality is a weird mirror, wherein men see themselves diminished and distorted.

She said nothing, as though she knew that beauty possesses a celestial language exalted above the sounds and syllables spoken by lip and tongue—an eternal language that embraces all the rhapsodies of humankind, transforming them into voiceless feelings. In

Beauty is a mystery that our spirits comprehend, in which they rejoice, and under the influence of which they grow.

Love is the only freedom in this world, because it elevates the soul to a lofty station that cannot be attained by the laws and customs of human beings or conquered by the laws of nature.

She wore her sadness as a spiritual badge, which made her body’s charms all the more daunting and remarkable.

Every great and beautiful thing in this world is generated by a single thought or feeling within a human being.

How ignorant are those who imagine that love is born from long association and unbroken companionship. True love is the daughter of a spiritual understanding, and if that understanding is not achieved in a single moment, it will never be attained—not in a year, not in a whole century.

What father would not find it difficult to be separated from his daughter, whether she were going to the house of his neighbor or to the palace of a king? What man does not shudder in the depths of his soul when the law of nature separates him from the daughter with whom he played when she was a child, whom he reared as a girl, and whom he kept company as a woman?

Are not all the grapes hanging out of reach sour in the religion of jackals?

The heart of a woman struggles long, but does not die. The heart of a woman resembles a field on which human beings stage battles and massacres, uprooting trees, burning the underbrush, spattering the rocks with gore, sowing its earth with bones and skulls. But it abides, imperturbable, placid, self-assured; thereon spring remains spring, and autumn, autumn, till the end of time.

From her throat you send forth songs of joy, then you seal her lips with grief and bind her tongue with sorrow.

The spiritual light that had shown me the beauty of the world and the delights of existing things had metamorphosed into a fire that seared my heart with flames and shrouded it with smoke.

But is not a frail woman a symbol for an exploited nation? Is not a woman torn painfully between the desires of her soul and the bonds of her body like a persecuted country caught between its rulers and its priests? Are not the invisible tempests that hurl a beautiful young woman into the gloom of a grave like the severe storms that bury the lives of people under silt? A woman is to a nation as a ray is to a lamp; can the rays of the lamp be faint if its oil has not run low?

For the soul to experience torment because of its perseverance in the face of trials and difficulties is more noble than for it to retreat to a place of safety and calm.

The old find rest within the soft wings of death.

A mother is everything in this life: She consoles in grief; she gives hope in sorrow and power in weakness. She is a fountain of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Whoever loses a mother loses a breast to lean his head against, a hand to bless him, and an eye to watch over him.

Kiss my spirit with yours. Give me the kiss of hope, and don’t spill a drop of bitter grief on my body, lest the grasses and flowers be prevented from imbibing my elements. Don’t pour tears of misery on my hand, for they will grow into thorns above my grave. Don’t inscribe on my brow a single line with the sighs of mourning, for the dawn breeze will pass by and read it, and will not carry the dust of my bones to verdant meadows.... I loved you in life, my child, and I will love you in death. My spirit will stay near to protect and safeguard you.”

“Writers and poets try to perceive the reality of woman, but at present they have not understood the secrets of her heart and the mysteries concealed in her breast, because they look at her from behind the veil of lust, seeing nothing but her figure; or they put her under the magnifying glass of misogyny and find nothing in her but weakness and submission.”

Limited love demands possession of the beloved, but infinite love desires only its own essence. There is a love that comes between the wakefulness and heedlessness of youth, which contents itself with meeting someone and being with him, and which grows with kisses and hugs. But the love that is born in infinite breasts, which descends with the mysteries of night, cannot be content with less than eternity, and does not stand awestruck before anything but divinity.

A barren woman is everywhere despised, for egotism leads most men to imagine that they can live on in the bodies of their sons, and they demand offspring so as to remain forever on this earth.