And When My Joy Was Born

And when my Joy was born I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting: "Come ye, my neighbors, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold the gladsome thing that laugheth on the sun."
But none of my neighbors came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment.

And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-top - and yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited.

Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.
Then my Joy died of isolation.

And now I only remember my dead Joy and remembering my dead Sorrow.

But memory is an Autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.

*

Kahlil Gibran

From: His Parables and Poems, 1918

Painting by Odilon Redon