A Prayer

Soft whispers tickled my ears in the stillness of the night, one night last month, and I took comfort in them and listened. There was a soul, serene and content, among three little downy nestlings on whose wings the feathers had not yet sprouted; far from her, in search of a livelihood, had gone the one in whose broad shelter she took refuge and in whose care she lived. She went on singing to her little ones until the song became a humble prayer, in a flood of verses such as these.

— On a day like this, ten years ago, we met — and we stood at a parting of branching ways. My direction was the high ideals I had sought since my childhood, and yours a settled, even life your family had chosen for you, that their eyes might be gladdened in you and they might shelter in your shade.

You looked up at me, as you had so often done, with the anguish of love in your eyes and a despairing reproach on your lips; and when you parted your lips to speak the word of departure, I pressed my fingertips upon them, lest I hear what might embitter my life or torment my conscience.

But... but your eyes, brimming over with a flood of tears, told me many things your speech was powerless to explain. And I knew at once that sincerity cannot be dressed in fine phrases: it is a spring welling from the heart, which the heart tries in vain to conceal.

I did not wait for what you ought to have said to me, or for what my pride ought to have done: I took your face between my hands and gazed long into those two questioning, tender eyes.

And like a fleeting mirage my ideals flashed and melted away, as though they had never been the shrine toward which I had turned since first I understood what life is.

Ah, you green dreams that so long rocked me in your arms through my childhood and my youth — farewell, never to return; for I have denied myself and vowed myself to another.

And so I came back to you in haste to meet you, my mouth so full of water that I could not utter a word; but you were generous, and asked nothing of me, and sought from me no explanation of anything.

It was enough for you to win my heart: you bowed down before it and enfolded it, devout and tender.

And at last I said to you, when I was able to speak, that my love would cost you dearly.

And you said to me: what is the merit of love, if it be not so?

And I said to myself: can I truly make him happy!!?

You were not a man of wealth,

nor a man of glory;

you were only that sweet, playful melody of which ears never tire and which never grows old in the hearing of time; you were that freshness which labors forever at creation and invention, in whose company one never feels decay.

And you were that love which spares no effort, giving all it has and all it holds dear, that I might be happy.

You overlaid my dark view of life with a golden embroidery, and it became radiant and bright.

Your goodness effaced my vanity, and my soul lay open to view, like a clear lake.

Your forbearance tamed my pride, until I grew easy to lead — except in whatever touches my dignity or my honor.

Every obstacle was made smooth on my way to my hopes, the great among them and the trifling, until no wish was left me in life... but you.

And tomorrow, when time casts down the load upon its shoulders of idle words and repeated commonplaces, to bury it in its depths forever with all that it has buried, it will keep these artless breaths — because they are songs about you and for you.

And because they burst from a heart that long mocked at the love of human beings, because it is material.

And if anyone wished to ask me what I should like to be, were I to return to the beginning of my life, I would answer at once: I want to be loved by one like you, differing from you in nothing, whether small or great.

You in whom I take refuge and shelter — I who wearied the ears of the days with woman’s independence of man — have I, do you think, rendered you your due?

My Lord, if I have fallen short, and if the span of my life is too narrow to hold more than these sincere words, then grant that these little ones of mine may render to their father what their mother owes him — for Thou art Generous, All-Knowing.

And the whispers fluttered, and the tenderness of the melody faded into the wide spaces of the sky among the still clouds, and in its place there rose a deep, reverent voice — the voice of the muezzin, calling the people to the dawn prayer.