Sad Romance by Thao Nguyen Xanh
SOLITUDE AND SECLUSION
Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.
On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul,
like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in
the palm of that woman.
If it were not for
that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice,
think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, I would
imagine that I were looking into a mirror.
From"Mirrors of the Soul"
Khalil Gibran
Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams,
and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of
an ocean of solitude and seclusion.
Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other
islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you
send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated
by its own pains,secluded its happiness and far away in its
compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.
I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy
in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that
a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts
of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling
with your own.
I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army
toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it.
On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures
a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like
the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and
jewels, but without water.
I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory surrounded
by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts,
gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet
lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you
looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as
if you were to them as the soul is to the body.
On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside
your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its
loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if
begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders
of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except
its solitude and seclusion.
I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful
woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at
you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and sweetness
of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has
erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now
within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love,
those who were separated by solitude and seclusion.
Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other
residence and neighbors.
Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named
after you.
If this residence is dark, you cannot light it
with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill
it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle
of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by
someone else.
Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and
seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion
you would not be you and I would not be I.
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