Kahlil Gibran in English Version

A NATION'S DEATH

By: Kahlil Gibran

My people are gone, but I remain. They wail in my solitude. Death is my best friend, and in death, my life is nothing but a great calamity.

The little hills of my land are flooded with tears and blood, because my nation and my beloved passed away, and I am here, living as I did when my nation and my beloved enjoyed life and the gift of life, when the hills of my land were blessed and covered with sunshine.

My people died of hunger, and he did not perish because of the suffering of hunger. He was slain by the sword, and I wandered among happy nations, slept on soft beds, and smiled for days. While the days smiled at him.

My people died in pain and a shameful death. Here I live in prosperity and peace. This is the deep tragedy that always plays on the stage of my heart. Few people want to watch this drama, because my people are like birds with broken wings left behind by their friends.

If I am hungry and live in the midst of people who are very hungry, tormented in the midst of my oppressed people, burdened with black days that will shine more on my restless dreams, and the darkness of the night that will be less dark before my empty eyes and the lamentation of the heart and my wounded soul. Because he shared their sorrows and sufferings with his people, they would feel the highest pleasure that only the sufferer created in his sacrifice.

But I do not live with my hunger and persecute those who walk in the procession of death to martyrdom. I am here across the wide ocean, living in the shadow of serenity and in the sunshine of peace. I am far from the arena of sorrow and suffering. I can not boast of anything, because it is not from my own tears.

What can an outcast son do for a nation that is starving to death, and what value can it be for those who mourn a poet who is gone? This is my doom, and this is the silent calamity that brings contempt to my soul and to the ghosts of the night. This is the tragedy of suffering that locks my tongue, binds my hands, and holds me captive to seizing power, desire, and action. This is the curse that burns on my forehead before God and man.

Often they say to me, "The disaster in your country will not mean anything to the peace of the world. The tears and the blood of your people are not as heavy as the rivers of blood and tears in the valleys of the gorges and the lands of the earth. Yes, but the death of my people is a silent charge; that is why the evils composed by the heads of the unseen serpents are sad songs and scenes. If my people fought against tyrants and oppressors to the point of being rebellious, I would have said, "To die for freedom is nobler than to live in the shadow of weak surrender, for he who embraces death with the sword of truth in his hand will serve with the eternity of righteousness, for life is weaker than life." death and death is weaker than the truth. "

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