In My Library — For Every Flower a Fragrance

It was the dawn of spring, on one of its warm days... and I sat enjoying that overflowing beauty — how much it has inspired, and inspires still, ever since there has been spring on earth.

I thought of the painters in every corner of the world: how many pictures they have painted of it, and are painting still.

I thought of the men of letters: how many of their pearls they have scattered about it, how many of their tales they have woven, and are weaving still.

I thought of the poets: how they have sung it and sing it still... when there was the postman, carrying to me the collection For Every Flower a Fragrance, published by Dar al-Ahad in Beirut, by the inspired poet Chafic Maalouf — on glossy paper, in the elegant printing for which the proprietors of “Dar al-Ahad” are known.

I made myself ready for the pleasure, as the seeker of intoxication makes ready the apparatus of his drinking: a new collection of verse; paper and a pen with which to set down whatever impressions came over me; then markers to place at any page that stirred my admiration, so that I might return to it; then a quiet room... in short, everything that doubles the delight of rapture.

I turned the first page, and there met me the poet’s dedication to al-Sha'ir al-Qarawi, and I admired that goodly spirit of fellowship and true brotherhood... Then I admired the description that shows you that everything in existence was created — or so it seems to the poet — created to be a musical instrument playing its melodies, that the poet might sing his tunes upon it:

The forest and the river and the butterfly,
the flowers, the grass of the meadows, and the breeze,
and all that morning uncovers,
and all on which the darkness throws its cloak —
they are but strings plucked by the hand of the nights,
and the poet is the melody.

I turned the page to touch the delicate sensibility of the poet who took in... what the glass said as it was shattering.

And I admired the picture of vanity routed, as all vanity in this world is routed: the darkness thinks itself everything and goes charging and wheeling, towering and lording it; but when the sun rises and there is no place left for it, it knows its true nature and shrinks back, returning to the foot of the slope to rub its brow and its mouth in the dust.

And I liked the thought in the proud gardener who bends over his seedlings:

He raises them up above the earth
to save them from the abasement of prostration.

And I could not keep from crying out:
Alas for us — for the abasement of prostration!

And oh, how badly we need such a picture of proud dignity to spread until it becomes second nature in every one of us — spread by every gardener: by a cultivated mother and a father who is a friend, by the teacher in his institute and the merchant in his shop, or the chief among his employees. For we are a nation that longs to rise, and it needs all its pride and all its self-respect to be able to do so...

And there passed before me the Negus, on the day he wished to leave his country and killed his lion before quitting his palace — because the lion’s roar was

a reproach upon you, his roar: do you feed yourself
on freedom, while keeping him the tame companion of captivity?

Here is the picture of precious freedom, sought even by the beast — how much more, then, by man!

And ambition in the rooster — the ambition that takes no heed of death:

So long as in your eyes the dreams of desire
blaze up, what is it to you that you go to your death?

Hail to ambition that holds life cheap and laughs at death!

As for Baalbek — blessed be the grandeur in her, inspiring still...
Blessed be she: the generations, for all their passing, could do no more than keep for her remains their awe-inspiring solemnity.

She crouched upon the breast of Time and bound
both his hands, till he was at a loss how to reach her.

She trod upon the giant heaps of ruin as though
her sandals were treading on the very head of Time.

And after all this — do you not see with me that in the poet’s collection there are pricks that waken and lessons that delight, and that every flower among his blossoms has its fragrance...?