YOU HAVE YOUR LEBANON, I HAVE MINE

By: Khalil Gibran
translated from Arabic: Yahja Hondozi

You have your Lebanon and I have mine.

Your Lebanon is political and has its problems.

My Lebanon is natural in all its beauty.

You have your Lebanon with programs and conflicts.

I have mine with his dreams and hopes.

Be satisfied with your Lebanon as I am satisfied with my vision of a free Lebanon.

Your Lebanon is a tangled political knot which time demands to be untied.

My Lebanon is a chain of hills and mountains that rise with respect and majesty from the sky.

Your Lebanon is an international problem which has not yet been resolved.

My Lebanon is a peaceful, enchanted valley, with church bells and gurgling streams.

Your Lebanon is a contest between opponents from the west and those from the south.

My Lebanon is a winged prayer that hovers at dawn when shepherds lead their flocks to pasture and, again, at evening when peasants return from meadows and vineyards.

Your Lebanon is a list of trivial heads.

Mine is a clear mountain that stands between the sea and the plain, like a poet between one and the other eternity.

Your Lebanon is a fox's trick when it meets a hyena and a hyena's cunning when it meets a wolf.

My Lebanon is a wreath of memories of girls shouting for joy and virgins singing between the threshing floor and the wine press.

Your Lebanon is a chess game between a bishop and a general.

My Lebanon is a temple where my soul finds heaven when it gets tired of this civilization running on squeaky wheels.

Your Lebanon is two men: one who pays taxes and the other who collects them.

My Lebanon is he who rests his head on his hand under the shade of the Sacred Cedar, forgetting everything but God and the light of the Sun.

Your Lebanon is portraits, post offices and markets.

My Lebanon is a distant idea, a burning love and a divine word which the earth whispers in the ear of space.

Your Lebanon are named officers, employees and directors.

My Lebanon is the growth of youth, the determination of maturity and the wisdom of old age.

Your Lebanon is the representative offices and the boards.

My Lebanon is companionship and gathering around the hearth on stormy nights when the darkness is softened by the whiteness of the snow.

Your Lebanon is parties and sects.

My Lebanon is the youth that believes in the rocky heights, treads the streams and wanders the fields.

Your Lebanon is speeches, lectures and debates.

Mine is the singing of the nightingales, the meeting of the branches in the forest, the echoes of the shepherd's flute in the valleys.

Your Lebanon is disguises, borrowed ideas and deceptions.

My Lebanon is a simple and naked truth.

Your Lebanon is the laws, regulations, documents and diplomatic acts.

Mine is in touch with the secrets of life which he knows without conscious knowledge; My Lebanon is a longing which with its sensitive peak reaches the edge of the invisible and believes that it is a dream.

Your Lebanon is a gloomy old man who strokes his beard and thinks only of himself.

My Lebanon is a young man who stands upright like a tower, who smiles like the dawn and thinks of others as he thinks of himself.

Your Lebanon wants to separate and be united with Syria at the same time.

My Lebanon neither unites nor divides, neither expands nor shrinks.

You have your Lebanon, I have mine.

You have your Lebanon and its sons, and I have mine and its sons.

But who are the sons of your Lebanon?

Let me tell you their reality:

They are such, whose souls are born in the hospitals of the West, whose minds wake up in the lap of greedy people who play the role of generous people.

They are like twisted branches that bend sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left. They tremble in the morning and in the evening, but they are not aware of their trembling.

They are like a ship without a mast and kitch when they hit the waves. Doubt is her captain, and her harbor is a wolf's den. Isn't every capital of Europe a wolf den?

These sons are strong and eloquent among themselves, but weak and dumb among Europeans.

They are free and earnest reformers, but only in the newspapers and in the pulpit.

They croak like frogs and say, "We are getting rid of our old enemy," while their old enemy hides within themselves.

They march to a funeral ceremony singing and blowing trumpets, but greet the wedding ceremony on horseback wailing and tearing their clothes.

They don't know about hunger until they feel it in their pockets. When they meet someone who is spiritually hungry, they shun him and mock him, saying, "He is just a ghost walking through the world of ghosts."

They are like slaves who, having replaced rusty shackles with shiny ones, consider themselves free.

These are the sons of your Lebanon. Are there any of them as strong as the rocks of Lebanon, as sweet and clear as the waters of Lebanon, as pure and fresh as the invigorating breeze of Lebanon?

Is there any of them who can claim that his life was a drop of blood in the veins of Lebanon or a tear in his eyes or a smile on his lips?

These are the sons of your Lebanon. How big they are in your eyes, and how small in my eyes!

And now let me show you the sons of my Lebanon:

They are peasants who turn stony lands into orchards and gardens.

They are shepherds who lead their flocks from one valley to another so that they can grow and multiply to give you their meat for food and their wool for clothing.

The sons of my Lebanon are vinedressers who press grapes and make good wine.

Fathers who grow mulberry trees and those who spin silk.

Men reaping wheat and women gathering sheaves.

They are masons and potters, weavers and smelters of church bells.

They are poets and singers who pour their soul into new verses.

They are the ones who, penniless, left Lebanon for another country with a burning decision in their hearts to return with their hands full and a laurel wreath of achievement adorning their foreheads.

They adapt to the new environment and are appreciated wherever they go.

These are the sons of my Lebanon, unquenchable torches and incorruptible salt.

They walk with firm feet toward truth, beauty, and perfection.

What will you leave Lebanon and its children a hundred years from now?

Tell me, what will you leave for the future, except excuses, lies and nonsense?

Do you believe that the ether will receive the spirits of death and the spirit of the graves?

Can you imagine his body in rags suffocating life?

I tell you the truth, the olive tree planted by a peasant at the foot of the mountains of Lebanon will outlast your deeds and achievements. And a wooden plow pulled by two oxen across the terrace of Lebanon will exceed your hopes and ambitions.

I tell you, I have the conscience of the cosmos as a witness, that the song of the vegetable pickers on the slopes of Lebanon is more valuable than the chatter of your honorable personalities.

Remember that you are zero. But when you realize your smallness, my intolerance towards you will turn into compassion and love. Too bad you don't understand that!

You have your Lebanon, and I have mine.

You have your Lebanon and its sons. Be happy with it and them if you are happy with empty bubbles. As for me, I am happy and content with my Lebanon, with sweetness, contentment, and tranquility in my regard for it. /Magazine "Academia"/Telegraph/