SONGS OF HAPPINESS
Man is my lover, and I am his beloved. I desire him, and he is inflamed by me. But, alas, I have a partner in his love who makes me wretched and torments him, a second wife named Matter who follows us wherever we go, a watcher keeping us apart.
I seek my lover in the countryside among the trees and by the lakes, but I do not find him. Matter has beguiled him and led him away to the city, to society and corruption and misery.
I seek him in the halls of knowledge and in the temples of wisdom, but I do not find him. Matter, she who is dressed in dust, has led him to the fortresses of selfishness where heedlessness dwells.
I seek him in the fields of contentment, but I do not find him, for my enemy has chained him in the caverns of gluttony and lust.
I call to him at dawn, when the east is filled with joy, but he does not hear me, for his eyes are heavy with the torpor of greed. I caress him in the evening when the darkness becomes silence and the flowers sleep, but he will not pay me heed, because he thinks only of the concerns of the morrow.
My lover loves me and seeks me in his own works, but he will find me only in the works of God. He seeks union with me in a palace of glory that he builds upon the skulls of the weak or in gold and silver. I will appear to him only in a simple house built by the gods on the banks of the emotions' stream. He seeks to kiss me before tyrants and murderers, but I will only allow him to taste of my mouth in solitude among the pure flowers. He would make deceit an intermediary between us, but I desire no intermediary save the stainless deed, the selfless act.
My lover has learned to cry and lament from my enemy, Matter; but I shall teach him to shed tears of entreaty from the eye of his soul and to sigh as he seeks contentment. My lover is mine, and I am his.
~ Kahlil Gibran
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