By Khalil Gibran
Date: 8 June 1998

The Enchantress

The woman my heart has loved sat yesterday in this lonely room and
rested her lovely body upon this velvet couch. From the crystal 
goblets she sipped the aged wine.
This is yesterday's dream; for the woman my heart has loved is gone to
distance place - the Land of Oblivion and Emptiness.
The print of her fingers is yet upon my mirror; and the fragrance of
her breathing is still within the folds of my garments; and the echo
of her sweet voice can be heard in this room.
But the woman my heart has loved is gone to a distant place called the
Valley of Exile and Forgetfulness.
By my bed hangs a portrait of this woman. The love letters she wrote to
me I have kept in a silver case, studded with emeralds and coral. And
all these things will remain with me till tomorrow, when the wind will
blow them away into oblivion, where only mute silence reigns.
The woman I have loved is like the woman to whom you have given her your
hearts. She is strangely beautiful, as if fashioned by a god; as meek
as the dove, as wily as the serpent, as proudly graceful as the
peacock, as fierce as the wolf, as lovely as the white swan, and as
fearful as the black night. She is compounded of a handful of earth
and a beakerful of sea-foam.
I have known this woman since childhood. I have followed her into the
fields and laid hold of the hem of her garments as she walked in the
streets of the city. I have known her since the days of my youth, and I
have seen the shadow of her face in the pages of the books I have read.
I have heard her heavenly voice in the murmur of the brook.
To her I opened my heart's discontents and the secrets of my soul.
The woman whom my heart has loved is gone to a cold, desolate and
distant place - the Land of Emptiness and Oblivion.
The woman my heart has loved is called Life. She is beautiful and draws
all hearts to herself. She takes our lives in pawn and buries our
yearnings in promises.
Life is a woman bathing in the tears of her lovers and anointing
herself with the blood of her victims. Her rainments are white days,
lined with darkness of night. She takes the human heart to lover, but
denies herself in marriage.
Life is an enchantress
Who seduces us with her beauty -
But he who knows her wiles
Will flee her enchantments.