VISION of KAHLIL GIBRAN

There in the middle of the field, by the side of a crystalline stream I saw a bird- cage whose rods and hinges were fashioned by an expert's hands. In one corner lay a dead bird and in another were 2 basins- one empty of water and the other of seeds. I stood there reverently, as if the lifeless bird and the murmur of the water where worthy of a deep silence and respect something worthy of examination and meditation by the hearth and conscience.
As I engrossed myself, in view and thought, I found that the poor creature had died of thirst beside a stream of water and of hunger in the midst of a field, cradle of live; like a rich man locked in an iron safe, perishing from hunger amid heaps of gold.
Before my eyes I saw the cage turned suddenly into a human skeleton and the dead bird into a man's heart which was bleeding from a deep wound that looks like the lips of a sorrowing woman A voice came from that wound saying, "I am the human heart, prisoner of substance and victim of earthy laws"
'In God's fields of Beauty, at the edge of the stream of life, I was imprisoned in the cage of laws made by man"
"In the center of beautifull creation I died neglected because I was kept from enjoying the freedom of God's bounty".
'Everything of beauty that awakens my love and desire is a disgrace, according to man's conception; everything of goodness that I crave is but naught, according to his judgment"
" I am the lost human heart, imprisioned in the foul dungeon of man's dictates, tied with chains of earthly authority, dead and forgetten by laughing humanity whose tongue is tied and whose eyes are empty of visible tears".

All these word I heard and I saw them emerging with a stream of ever-thinning blood from the wounded heart.
More was said, but my misted eyes and crying soul prevented further sight or hearing.

For Carmo