At the Tables of Pain

"You too, O Pain, create man"
"A poet"

"Even so are you: pain must shatter your shells before you can know the meaning of life."
"Gibran, in The Prophet"

"Blessed are they that suffer, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"
"The Nazarene"

... Pain! Pain!
What heart has not drunk deep from its springs?
What eye has not looked down upon heaps of its victims?
What ear has not been reached by the voices of the millions of sufferers, roaring as if with the madness of all that is on earth and all that is in heaven??
What hand has not touched a thousand wounds in a thousand bodies, in a thousand hearts?
No god was ever crucified but on the wood of pain!
No messenger was ever stoned but with the stones of pain!
No child was ever born on earth but at the hand of pain!
No new religion ever arose in the world but upon the book of pain!
No beautiful, sublime idea was ever created but pain was its creator!
Humanity never walked one step toward God but pain guided its steps!
We never fled from its face but we met it in every face.
We never shut our eyes to the sight of it but we found it in our hearts, eating of them as they eat of it.
Pain!
Pain!
It is the weaver of our wedding garments and of the shrouds of our coffins!
The cook of our food, and the one seated at our tables!
We meet it...
In our virtues and in our faults...
In our lusts, the pure and the criminal, in our love and in our hate, in our triumph and in our defeat, in our beauty and in our ugliness..
Pain!
Bind us, O God, to the holy wood!
The wood on which Socrates died smiling. And Jesus, praying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do..."

Pain...

The great tragedy of humanity, since humanity has been...

At the holy table of pain sat love and art, wisdom and knowledge, and divine lamps rose up for mankind...

The earth clamors with revelries, and in one corner of the earth — a corner that is the whole earth, for all its narrowness — Schubert bent over himself, wrung and wrung again by pains, nailed to the wood driven into his flesh, writhing and crying out from his blood:

"Pain has created songs, but the world is a deaf and dumb animal that does not comprehend the artist's pain."

... And while the dark woman George Sand writhed in the arms of lovers on the shores of Venice, Musset, the fair and beautiful poet, was cooking his heart as food for pain, crying out in his aching red nights:

"I have suffered much, and I still have need of pain."

"I have loved, and I still have need of love."

And he returns, alone, to his poor mother, broken-winged, plucked of his feathers, his heart torn, to spit out his life and his blood..

And there were the "Nights."

Nights of fever and ache and madness and delirium... nights of immortal genius; the young poet shattered his nerves and poured out his prime and his youth at the feet of the night, into the cup of pain... and his life was plucked away, slowly, as one plucks apart a silken garment.. And he would cry out..

"I love... and with a kiss I give away my genius."

"I love — and let streams of tears, that never dry, pour down my pale cheek.."

... And Rome.. dissolute Rome, cackling the cackle of the beast and lapping at the filth of her fevered lusts, her burning breath rising to the sky — a man of this earth, our own earth, was being nailed to the wood of pain.

Pain furrowed his luminous brow, and the blood ran from his wounds and poured into the veins of a paralyzed humanity, and through its nerves ran a holy tremor, bearing all the blessings of earth and heaven..

And a storm of blood rose upon the world, sweeping away in its course the filth of a plague-stricken life; and there was the Gospel, and the people carried it stained with the blood of the great man..

And the crown of thorns triumphed over the crown of Rome!

And the reed shattered Caesar's scepter..

And pain stood erect in pride and glory upon the mount of Golgotha, mocking the cackles of Herod and Caiaphas...

And thus the prophets arose in the earth.

Lebanon, 1936