(by Meg Boyles)
Over the past year, I’ve had an obsession with Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. I’ve watched countless documentaries on him, read all of his poetry (thanks to my handy-dandy The Essential Rumi), and even wrote my college essay on him. His simple yet profound words left me inspired and at peace. Lately, however, without any new Rumi material to pour over, I’ve needed something new to dedicate my energy to.
As I read Kahlil Gibran’s first poem in The Prophet, I felt the same spark immediately ignite. Gibran’s narrator, Almustafa dispenses ageless wisdom in prose poetry on love, marriage, work, sorrow, death, prayer, etc. What struck me most was the power each word held. On love, Gibran writes:
“But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.”
On freedom, Gibran writes:
“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights with a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise about them naked and unbound.”
Gibran describes all beings as interconnected, and life as achingly ephemeral. Reading this book has proved to be a kind of meditation and inspiration for thousands, including The Beatles, Indira Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy. As a whole, Gibran’s poetry is beautiful and heartfelt and very, very important. There is a certain kind of music that plays when the truth is written. When you read The Prophet, you’ll hear its tune loud and clear.
Twelve of Gibran’s own sketches are printed throughout The Prophet, lending a romantic quality to his mystical words.
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