Having already four treasured copies* of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, I didn’t need another — until I found this one at Goodwill. Behold its brief, but heartbreaking inscription:
[click to enlarge]
The book itself is from Alfred A. Knopf’s ninety-first printing, released in January 1973. It’s without marks, in fair but sturdy condition, and the back cover is ever-so-slightly bowed. I paid ninety-nine cents for it. In fact, if someone would like to have it, I will happily send it along to the first person who asks, with a note in my hand recording the date and place of purchase, and whatever else leaps into my head at the moment. I will even include something else in the package — my little chapbook of dreams, let us say: The Thing About Strawberries.
And if no one wants the book — you guessed it — I’ll keep it here, where it will become my fifth treasured copy....
* my mother’s, my grandmother’s, the one my mother bought in Canada many years ago and gave to me, and a slipcase edition I brought home a few months ago.
10.29.2010 #2
10.29.2010 #1 (recently acquired)
8 comments:
It pays to be on facebook at noon fifteen on a rainy Thursday! William, I will gladly accept it if you wish to send it forward.
Absolutely! — I’d be delighted. My email address is posted here and there, so drop me a line with your address and we’ll take it from there.
By the way — it’s Friday! (I think.)
Damn. Always a day late and dollar short.
Ah. Well, really, you were only a couple of hours late, not a whole day. But I guess that doesn’t help, does it. It’s getting so hard to make a prophet these days.
Oh no.....hm
to late.... beautiful book,beautiful inscription beautiful post !!
If you have a pop-up prophet somewhere in a dark corner of your room here is on interested person...:O)
Warm greetings!
Greetings, Aleksandra! If I find a pop-up prophet, I promise, you will be the first to know....
Yes, parting diminishes, but your generosity enriches you and all of us alike. This very week I had the pleasure of discovering and reading for the first time a poem by one of my ancestors, a great grand uncle, Jamil B. Holway, a Lebanese poet who migrated to America and was part of the circle of writers around Kahlil Gibran (known as the Pen League). Congratulations to ~im just only me~ for the gift and to you for your thoughtfulness.
And congratulations to you, Lorenzo, on your great discovery. There’s a whole story behind it, I know. And your arrival here is just as enriching.
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