I
Power sows in the depths of my heart, and I reap and gather in the
grain, bestowing it lavishly upon the starving. Spirit revives this
small vine, and I crush its bunches of grapes and pour out the juice for
the thirsty. The sky fills this lamp with oil, and I light it and place
it in the window of my house for those who pass by in the black of
night. I do these things because I live thereby, and when the days
prevent me from doing so and the nights shackle my hand, I shall seek
death. For death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his
own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Human beings clamor like a tempest while I sigh in silence, for I have
found that the violence of the storm subsides and the abyss of time
swallows it, whereas a sigh endures as long as God.
Human beings cling to matter that is cold as snow whereas I seek the
flame of love so that I might place it in my breast, where it will
devour my ribs and destroy my insides. For I have discovered that matter
kills painlessly, but love revives us through torments.
Human beings separate into factions and tribes and adhere to countries
and regions whereas I see my essence as foreign to any one land and
alien to any single people. The entire earth is my homeland and the
human family is my clan. For I have found human beings to be weak, and
it is small-minded for them to divide themselves up; the earth is
cramped, so that only ignorance leads people to partition it into realms
and principalities.
Human beings unite in destroying the temples of the spirit and cooperate
in building the edifices of the body. I alone celebrate in elegies. For
I listen and hear from within me a voice of hope saying, "Just as love
restores life to the human heart through pain, so foolishness teaches
the paths to knowledge. Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and
complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in
vain."
II
I crave my homeland for its beauty and love its inhabitants for their
poverty. Yet when my people set out to defend what they call nationalism
and march upon the homeland of my neighbors—plundering their wealth,
killing their men, making orphans of their children, and widows of their
women, spilling the blood of their sons on the earth, and feeding the
flesh of their youths to beasts of prey—then I hate my country and its
inhabitants.
I rhapsodize, remembering my birthplace, and I long for the house in
which I was raised. But when a vagrant passes by and asks for shelter in
that house and for food from its residents, and when he is refused and
cast out, then my rhapsodies become dirges and my yearning turns to
disregard. Then I say in my essence, "The house that is too miserly to
share bread with the needy or bedding with one who asks for it is most
deserving of all houses to be torn down and destroyed."
I love my birthplace with some of the same love I shower upon my region;
I love my region with a part of the love I bestow on my homeland; and I
love the whole earth, because it is the place where humanity thrives,
and sacred humanity is the spirit of divinity in this world. This
humanity stands among ruins, hiding its naked form with tattered rags,
shedding hot tears on its withered cheeks, calling its children with a
voice that fills the ether with howling and lamentation, while its
children are too busy with their anthems of group loyalty to hear its
call and too concerned with burnishing their swords to heed its tears.
This humanity is seated alone, imploring its people, who do not hear.
Or, if one hears, he comes near and wipes away its tears and consoles it
in its afflictions. And the people say, "Leave it alone, for tears
affect only the weak."
Humanity is the spirit of divinity on earth. That divinity which walks
among the nations and speaks of love, pointing toward the paths of life,
while the people laugh and mock its words and teachings. That divinity
which the Nazarene heard yesterday (and they crucified him), which
Socrates perceived (and they poisoned him), and which today the
followers of the Nazarene and of Socrates have heard. They say its name
aloud before the people, and the people cannot kill them. But they
ridicule them instead, saying "Ridicule is crueler than killing, and
more bitter."
Jerusalem proved unable to kill the Nazarene, for he is alive forever;
nor could Athens execute Socrates, for he is immortal. Nor shall
derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those
who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever.
Forever.
III
You are my brother, and both of us are sons of a single, universal, and
sacred spirit. You are my likeness, for we are prisoners of the same
body, fashioned from the same clay. You are my companion on the byways
of life, my helper in perceiving the essence of reality concealed behind
the mists. You are a human being and I have loved you, my brother.
Say about me what you will, for tomorrow will pass judgment on you and
your words will be clear testimony in its court and pertinent evidence
before its justice.
Take from me what you will, for you only pilfer wealth, a portion of
which belongs to you, and property that I monopolize because of my
desires. You deserve some of it, should it please you.
Do with me what you will, for you are unable to touch my reality. Spill
my blood and burn my body, but my soul will never feel the pain and you
will never kill it. Fetter my hands and legs with chains and cast me
into an unlit stockade, for you will never succeed in imprisoning my
thoughts, which are free as a gale that lists in the sky without limit
or boundary.
You are my brother, and I love you.
I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in
your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the
spirit. The leaders of the branches of this religion are like fingers of
the hand of divinity, which point to the perfection of the soul.
I love you for the sake of your reality, which emanates from the
Universal Intellect; that reality which I cannot see now because of my
blindness but which I consider holy because it is among the works of the
soul; that reality that will encounter my own reality in the next
world, where they will mingle like the aromas of flowers and become a
single universal reality, eternal because love and beauty are
never-ending.
I love you because I have seen you weak before the heartless and
powerful, poor and needy before the lofty mansions of the grasping rich.
For this reson I wept for your sake, and through my tears I saw you in
the arms of justice, who smiles at you and heaps scorn on your
persecutors. You are my brother, and I love you.
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