Poetry

By Ameen Rihani.

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To my sisters
Saada and Adele

To my brother
Joseph

Salaam

From Syria to America

Pardon, dear reader.

The stranger at thy gate, hailing from the Orient, holds out to thee a gaunt and tattooed hand. This hand has often made mud-pies from earth that might have once mapped out the stars; or, in a drunken vision, heard the grumblings of a god and made of them a captivating creed: the brain of an ancient Assyrian astronomer; the spine of a Semitic sage; the cheeks of a Jezebel or a St. Takla; the heart of a slave that added beauty and horror to the chariot of a Babylonian king or a Roman conqueror:—any or all of these might have besmeared this hand.

Wilt thou take it? The hand of a personified illusion, of an exiled dream, of an Oriental who makes himself thy guest.

He comes not to preach Buddhism to thee; nor Mohammedanism; nor Babyism; nor any other ism made picturesque and alluring by red caftans, white turbans, blue sashes and ambergris-scented lies.

The only message he brings from his vine-crowned and pine-girdled Mother to bewitching and enriching America is that of love and longing and lacrimal. He came from the Mountains of Lebanon, from under the shadow of the Acropolis of Baalbak, to learn from the Yankees the way to do things—the way to rise and flourish and expand; or, as they put it, the way to get there and be it—from a mundane point of view, of course. It has been observed, however, that the spots of a leopard are irremovable; and so is the lethargy of an Oriental. The writer has found the strenuous life to be as depressing and dwarfing as prison life itself; and so he has fallen back to the habit of dreaming, and singing, and taking things easy, even in restless and dreamless America. This sounds paradoxical; it is like going from the country of Trusts and Equality to establish a trolley-car system in the Lebanons. Even this might be possible fifty years hence, despite the opposition of those ancient hills. The writer has forsaken their cedars and pines, their vineyards and fig groves to walk in the shadows of skyscrapers and watch the sun rise languidly from behind a mound of bricks or a smoking chimney, and sink a-blushing behind the grimy walls of gaseous Communipaw.

“So fair a sun
Setting over so foul a town!”

one would exclaim; but nature delights in paradoxes, and freaks, and rococo. These songs, dear reader, might not even deserve to be classified with like phenomena; but, as the sincere expression of a soul just emerging from the abyss, they deserve to stand. If, however, thou thinkest them no worse in spirit and merit than the amyelencephalic discourses of a pundit, or the emetic dissertations of a Zamackshary, then remember as thou settest the book aside that the author does not appeal to your charity, nor to your justice. Thou art the host, gentle reader; and he relies on the hospitality and cordiality due a guest.

Poetry

Ever to Be

My far cry, though no one should echo—
Though no one to listen should stand,
I shall dare with my burden the darkness
And I shall not retreat from this land;
Though I’m hurled ’neath the feet of the millions,
Who struggle their places to keep,
The sea-nymphs still bathe with my Fancy
And the Dryads still sweeten my sleep.

Though I’m crushed, cast away and forgotten—
Though I’m buried in the dust of their cars,
I can see through their madness above me—
I can feel the quick pulse of the stars;
Though my head be the foot-stool of tyrants,
Though my back be a step to their throne,
I still dwell with the kings of Orion
And I walk with the sun-queen alone.

Though the fire of my youth should consume me—
Though my body a brimstone should be,
I can draw on the clouds for their water
And behold! I’ve of water a sea;
And though roofless, and friendless, and hopeless,
And loveless, and godless I stand,
The waves of my Life shall continue
To murmur and laugh on the Strand.

Upon the Peak of Sanneen

My soul and I, upon the peak
Of Sanneen grim and grey,
Sat musing in the twilight of
A sombre summer day.

“Great Saturn and the Moon are gone
Together o’er the sea;
But will great Saturn e’er return
Should he elope with thee?

Ah well, who knows? when thou art gone
I, too, shall sink within the brine—
I, too, shall sail above this peak
And signal yonder groves of pine.

Behold the melancholy sky
Of this forgotten land;
On this side are the valleys bleak,
On this, the desert sand.”

“I hear the moaning of the wind,”
My sad companion said;
“The snow is gathering in me
And the night is overhead.

Long have we dwelt together, friend,
In our sweet ennui;
But were I now to take my leave,
Alas, what would I be?”

“O, think not of departing,
Ah, too young I am to die;
I’ll find the magic wings; and there
Still hangs a friendly sky.

Let us above these pines, and clouds,
And scents awhile yet dwell;—
Where wouldst thou go, if thou wert now
To sigh a last farewell?”

Thou seest the busy elements
Dissolving one by one
The souls that are acquitted,
For the all-absorbing sun.

Let’s sing the song of darkness then;
Thy prison is the Whole;—
What canst thou do, where wilt thou go,
What wilt thou be, my Soul?

Thou wouldst not be the air that weighs
Upon the rising dust;
Thou wouldst not be the fog that chokes
The air in savage lust.

Thou wouldst not be the clouds that block
The smoke’s way to a star;
Nor linger in the guilty tears
Of clouds before the bar.

Thou wouldst not be the rain that taunts
The all-devouring sea,
Itself destroying many a nest
In bush and rock and tree.

Thou wouldst not be the thunder’s tongue
Spell-binding all the spheres;
Nor wouldst thou be the lightning blade
That stabs and disappears.

Thou wouldst not be the dew that falls
Alike on thorn and flower;
Nor even the morning zephyr
That blows o’er den and bower.

Thou wouldst not be the virgin snow
Set free from yonder clouds,
Only to melt beneath the feet
Of surging human crowds.