As Fertile As I Am
Just the deep quiet,
just wanting that now,
the unmoving breeze
- God -
to penetrate me
as if were a woman needing,
wanting, destined to conceive,
and now was the only moment
ever available to this life.
The Beloved must lie beside me
in the next hour,
the Light must leave its seed all
over my frame and inside
so full inside that I drip upon the street
as I then bless the earth with my steps.
Then God will flood by every crevice
and the world will become my attendant
Look at all the good I could do if I ever wished
to give birth to the Beloved
to give the Beloved to this world.
In Gibran and Haskell's relationship the question was often asked if they were lovers in the physical sense. Though Gibran stayed rather hush on the matter, commenting only that it was a shame people see unifying bodies sexually as the highest expression of love, when in reality the twinning of two souls is the only thing that can satiate another being, Haskell said at times she grew frustrated. She doubted Gibran's complete interest in her if he did not want to have sex with her, though she willingly offered (and acknowledged she felt many more women had also offered, as there was something about Gibran's mind and the way it focused on you as if you were the only woman in existence that made one yearn for his body as well).
Now while Gibran did not have an interest in talking about his rejection of sex, he did openly discuss his desire to marry Mary, though he felt he could not in all actuality live up to it. From Mary Haskell's journal in April of 1912: "He spoke of the impossibility of his marrying now and the probability that always the urge to express what is in him will absorb him too much for marriage. It would be unfair to two things - the two most concerned; to the woman and the work. And I think he believed me when I told him I was with him in thought and realized that he needs all of himself now for the work and isn't ready to marry. I gave him too my guess that after he is established he will marry a rare but younger woman. "Well, irrespective of that hypothetical ideal being," he said, "let me say that I want to work always with you, to grow always with you. And my study is, how best to keep that something, that relation, between us unhurt, undimmed, living. I make mistakes, many mistakes in little things and in details. But about a big thing I've never yet been mistaken. And I feel that this thing between you and me is lasting. 70,000 years hence I shall be saying the same thing to you. Are you not conscious" - with a laugh - "of its being said 70,000 years ago?"
Over six months (November of 1912) after their previous conversation on the matter, Mary took to her journal to write down a revelation that had come to her: "I have realized how eminently the great poet is the great lover. I see it in Shakespeare and Aesochylus and Homer and Job. This explains Kahlil. Explains too the instinct I've had since we first met, to assure him of my personal feeling for him - my desire, in every degree of love I've borne him, to make him certain of it. Gradually I've understood that the value of such certainty is chiefly the freedom it gives him to love - since to Love only is Love welcome. It explains too so much of the small direct emphasis on sex of great poets: it irradiates their work, as it does real life - but is not predominantly talked about. They love all the life of man; his asexual levels have no dullness for them; therefore they take sex-love as it comes - and every other miracle thread of the web as it comes. Their souls are exercised like athletes' bodies. I have been aware of a difference from the custom of lovers - in the infrequency of letters between Kahlil and me and the brevity of his at least, and their rather few love-expressions. I've always known that rareness of love-words with him arose from more love, not less - but I've never known why this was. Now I know it is because all his living is a loving, is Loving. I know too why I so often wish I could just sit in the room with him and work while he worked - why I miss our never doing the daily round while we are together - and sometimes desire that more special talk with him - if it were not that we meet so little that there is always more special talk that must be, than we can possibly finish."
Gibran did comment on what sex with Mary would be like in one letter only (at least only one letter that appears in Beloved Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran, perhaps there could be other unpublished letters that contain musings). I found it rather poetic: "It would be so good to sit in your shadow for a few minutes afterward."
Walking in or lying under someone's shadow does serve as wonderful source of comfort in this world.
Below is Gibran's piece called "Love". Isn't it interesting how only the heads touch instead of the full intertwining of bodies?
Just the deep quiet,
just wanting that now,
the unmoving breeze
- God -
to penetrate me
as if were a woman needing,
wanting, destined to conceive,
and now was the only moment
ever available to this life.
The Beloved must lie beside me
in the next hour,
the Light must leave its seed all
over my frame and inside
so full inside that I drip upon the street
as I then bless the earth with my steps.
Then God will flood by every crevice
and the world will become my attendant
Look at all the good I could do if I ever wished
to give birth to the Beloved
to give the Beloved to this world.
In Gibran and Haskell's relationship the question was often asked if they were lovers in the physical sense. Though Gibran stayed rather hush on the matter, commenting only that it was a shame people see unifying bodies sexually as the highest expression of love, when in reality the twinning of two souls is the only thing that can satiate another being, Haskell said at times she grew frustrated. She doubted Gibran's complete interest in her if he did not want to have sex with her, though she willingly offered (and acknowledged she felt many more women had also offered, as there was something about Gibran's mind and the way it focused on you as if you were the only woman in existence that made one yearn for his body as well).
Now while Gibran did not have an interest in talking about his rejection of sex, he did openly discuss his desire to marry Mary, though he felt he could not in all actuality live up to it. From Mary Haskell's journal in April of 1912: "He spoke of the impossibility of his marrying now and the probability that always the urge to express what is in him will absorb him too much for marriage. It would be unfair to two things - the two most concerned; to the woman and the work. And I think he believed me when I told him I was with him in thought and realized that he needs all of himself now for the work and isn't ready to marry. I gave him too my guess that after he is established he will marry a rare but younger woman. "Well, irrespective of that hypothetical ideal being," he said, "let me say that I want to work always with you, to grow always with you. And my study is, how best to keep that something, that relation, between us unhurt, undimmed, living. I make mistakes, many mistakes in little things and in details. But about a big thing I've never yet been mistaken. And I feel that this thing between you and me is lasting. 70,000 years hence I shall be saying the same thing to you. Are you not conscious" - with a laugh - "of its being said 70,000 years ago?"
Over six months (November of 1912) after their previous conversation on the matter, Mary took to her journal to write down a revelation that had come to her: "I have realized how eminently the great poet is the great lover. I see it in Shakespeare and Aesochylus and Homer and Job. This explains Kahlil. Explains too the instinct I've had since we first met, to assure him of my personal feeling for him - my desire, in every degree of love I've borne him, to make him certain of it. Gradually I've understood that the value of such certainty is chiefly the freedom it gives him to love - since to Love only is Love welcome. It explains too so much of the small direct emphasis on sex of great poets: it irradiates their work, as it does real life - but is not predominantly talked about. They love all the life of man; his asexual levels have no dullness for them; therefore they take sex-love as it comes - and every other miracle thread of the web as it comes. Their souls are exercised like athletes' bodies. I have been aware of a difference from the custom of lovers - in the infrequency of letters between Kahlil and me and the brevity of his at least, and their rather few love-expressions. I've always known that rareness of love-words with him arose from more love, not less - but I've never known why this was. Now I know it is because all his living is a loving, is Loving. I know too why I so often wish I could just sit in the room with him and work while he worked - why I miss our never doing the daily round while we are together - and sometimes desire that more special talk with him - if it were not that we meet so little that there is always more special talk that must be, than we can possibly finish."
Gibran did comment on what sex with Mary would be like in one letter only (at least only one letter that appears in Beloved Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran, perhaps there could be other unpublished letters that contain musings). I found it rather poetic: "It would be so good to sit in your shadow for a few minutes afterward."
Walking in or lying under someone's shadow does serve as wonderful source of comfort in this world.
Below is Gibran's piece called "Love". Isn't it interesting how only the heads touch instead of the full intertwining of bodies?
Love, Gibran
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