Dear May

Dear May,

This is the last week of Lent. In my seclusion I am fasting perpetually — fasting from the city and all in it that the soul still craves: an hour at the club, say, with the brother men of letters; or an evening at the theater listening to a social drama or a comedy; or a round of the galleries of modern pictures and drawings; or a dinner and a glass of wine with a companion who understands life. But this past week I was among the happiest of fasters, for there visited me one who made me more abstinent still toward the city — who made me forget, indeed, all its pleasures. My visitor in my solitude is the genial companion who never wearies and never yawns. And if we light the lamp in the evening to finish an afternoon's talk, and after an hour drowsiness comes stealing into my eyelids, I do not resist it or deny its presence; nor am I ashamed if my fingers slacken and the honored visitor falls into my lap, my head bowed above it and dreams hovering round about it.

This visitor came to me complaining, in the language of birds and flowers, of many things in life, and talked of them, complaining, with a talk like the magic of birds caroling in the trees — its delight lingers in the mind and does not turn to gall in the heart. How could it be otherwise, when in “The Eyes” there is the magic of all eyes, and a tear over the silent songster echoes the immortal song; when “Be Happy” is happiness itself, and “Where Is My Homeland” is lovelier than all homelands — in these days — and “The Dancing Soirées” is more delicious, more delightful, and more joyous than any dancing soirée.

May — and I will not trouble you with more than this of symbol and metaphor — I read “The Dancing Soirées” and “The Eyes” and “You, O Stranger,” and then read them again; and I went back through the pages and read “Loti, the Departed Who Remains,” and “Shibli Shumayyil the Poet,” and “Ismail Sabri.” And what amazed me in you — you who, in your bower and in your holy of holies, are an Eastern woman still — was that strange double personality whose left hand scarcely knows what its right is doing. In criticism it allows its heart no more than the measure of a moment's nearness — the heart comes like a child and smiles at her, and its smile is reflected in a mind like Kawthar and in a culture — I thank you for this word — like a prism. And in the wildernesses of longing and the meadows of love it allows its mind no more than a glance that recalls the soft, sweet shade and the flowering, refreshing thickets that life holds for its philosophers and letters for their princes. And you have grasped the secret of the two, and delight in both beauties; and we thank God that you are a writer, so that you do not keep to yourself alone what you enjoy. And I thank God that you are my friend, so that you remember me among those you remember. Will you not favor me with a word bearing something of your news? I remembered you many times in the Dahna, and sent you from there a few wireless messages — I believe in answer to one that came to me from you once while I was in those wastes. So I do not think you will say — you who take pity even on illusions — that you never once thought of me. And will you not take bodily shape in Lebanon in the days to come, and so gladden eye and ear many times more than you gladden mind and heart?

God greet you and keep you well, and make Lebanon your dwelling this summer. 1924. Your friend,