Did you love my death day?
Did you1 love my death day when you wrote:
“Have you betrayed, and annulled the [marital] bonds?”
How could I betray a learned woman like you,
when God has commanded [to be faithful] to the wife of one’s youth?
If my heart would plot to abandon you,
I would decree a thousand decrees against it.
May God crush the one that betrays a friend
with hostile, cruel, alien betrayal.
May leopards eat his very flesh,
and may eagles lap up his blood.
And who is like the stars of heaven . . .
Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.
Notes
[Plural. The scholar of medieval Hebrew poetry Ezra Fleischer interpreted this as addressing a group of the poet’s wife’s friends, who have sent a letter on her behalf (in addition to the one that she herself has sent).—Trans.]
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.