"Seven Words"

              Barbara Young was with Kahlil Gibran at the hospital when  he passed away.  Soon afterward she packed the precious paintings and effects left in the studio where Gibran had lived for eighteen years, and sent them to his home town of Bcherri in Lebanon.

              How close a relationship existed during the seven years, prior to his death, can be answered, in part, by excerpts from Barbara's own writing.

              Barbara never lived with Gibran.  She kept her own apartment in the city of New York.

             One Sunday, Barbara wrote, accepting an invitation from Gibran, she went to the studio. Gibran was writing a poem; he was at his desk when she arrived.  While composing Gibran usually paced the floor and then he would sit down to write a line or two.

               I waited while he repeated his writing and his walking again and again.  Then a thought came to me.  The next time he walked I went and seated myself at his table and took up his pencil.  When he turned he saw me sitting here.

              "You make the poem and I'll write it," I said.

              After much protest Gibran consented to try it.  He was pleased with the experiment.

              "Well, you and I are two poets working together."  He paused.  Then after a silence,"We are friends," he said.  "I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me.  We share life."

              As they worked together and she became more acquainted with his manner of thought and his work, she told him of her determination to write a book about him.  Gibran was pleased and it was from that time on that he talked often of his family, and some of the events in his life.

              One day Gibran asked, "Suppose you were compelled to give up- to forget all the words you knew except seven- what are the seven words you would keep?"

              "I named only five," Barbara wrote.  "God, Life, Love, Beauty, Earth...and asked Gibran what other words would he select and he answered, "The most important words to keep are: You and I...without these two there would need to be no others," then Gibran selected the seven words: You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth."

~Mirrors of the Soul
Kahlil Gibran 

Translated and Edited by
Joseph Sheban

~Beannaichte'

7 January, 2015

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