On Marriage by Kahlil Gibran

On Marriage
by Kahlil Gibran

Then Almitra spoke again and said, And
what of Marriage, master?
     And he answered saying:
     You were born together, and together you
shall be forevermore.
     You shall be together when the white
wings of death scatter your days.
     Ay, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
     But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
     And let the winds of the heavens dance
between you.

      Love one another, but make not a bond
of love:
     Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
     Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
     Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf.
     Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
     Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

      Give your hearts, but not into each
other’s keeping.
     For only the hand of Life can contain
your hearts.
     And stand together yet not too near
together:
     For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
     And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.

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I think the first time I used this was in one of my earlier marriages, and I have loved the sense of honoring separation and entwinement at the same time. It is, of course, one of the most common and famous of his pieces, read at weddings continuously for a hundred years, and I was recently reminded of it by someone dear. And it’s a bit of a surprise it’s such a wedding piece, because this idea of union and merger has been such a part of Western romantic literature that it is oddly countercultural — that a bond is as much about apartness as togetherness.

Gibran, On Marriage. From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923)