Old Poetry Old Poetry Poetry • Poets • Essays • Forums •

Clothes Chapter X

And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."

And he answered:

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.

Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear."

But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.

And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.

Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Leave a guest comment (subject to review)

    : Comment:

    Name: (required)
    Email: (required, hidden from spam)

Comments

  • TheFlawedOne
    September 26, 2003
    Edit | Reply

    awesome

    I love Kahlil Gibran. I think he was an incredible writer and the more I read him the more I love him.

    This piece spoke to me many ways, but the part that sticks out the most would be that the clothes don't hide the unbeautiful. To me, this means if a person is ugly in spirit you cannot hide that fact no matter how hard you try. I love this piece and am off to find my favorite piece by Mr. Gibran.

  • MasochistBunny
    July 22, 2003
    Edit | Reply
    And he answered:

    Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

    And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.

    Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,

    For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

    Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear."

    But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.

    And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.

    Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

    And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?


    Here, I believe, he is saying that our clothes are shackles. Indeed, this makes alot of sense, if you think about it. Not necessarily that we should all be naked (though this thought is approached too, I believe) but that we focus entirely to much on the material things in life, like clothing, vehicles, all the things that we own. We use them to compensate for things that we do not have in the non-material worlds, such as love, trust, spiritual connections .. truly a magnificent, thoughtful write!