Speak, messenger

Mid-11th Century

About This Entry

This is an odd poem, ostensibly sent in gratitude for a gift of flowers. While the poet praises the flowers, at length and deploying a profusion of vivid imagery, he does so in highly negative terms, likening the blossoms to violated, sick, shamed women, and only briefly praising the gift-giver in a few lines at the end. An element of sarcasm may be detected here. The description contains imagery that seems disturbing to a modern reader but might not have troubled its medieval audience.

Speak, messenger, my greetings to my friend,

a man whose like does not exist on earth,

whose wondrous gifts my heart will ever praise

and not forget as long as it may live.

He sent a salver full of fragrant flowers

(so may his hands be filled with all delights!)—

greenish-yellow things, each like

a sickly woman with her tunic torn;

red things that the eye perceives

as much of as the heart perceives in dreams.

Inside their clothes, their bodies seem to me

like a land inside concentric walls,

or like a laughing child whose father slaps him,

coloring his cheeks with shame and fear.

Some have known men, others not,

but still are sealed.

Their faces are concealed by linen veils,

as women are concealed from men,

but when they take their veils off, they appear

to a choleric and vengeful man

as if they had betrayed him—but they never did!—

their faces red with shame.

From their faces shines a light like sunlight,

when the chariots of day are hitched,

revealing wisdom’s wonders to the watcher,

though they have no wisdom of their own.

Contemplating them, a person’s heart

is like a courtier engulfed in plots,

like a man in panic from a dream,

like people who have tripped and cannot rise,

like a vulture that has lurched into a trap,

or like a student all bewildered

by the laws of consanguinity.

I take their beauty in, I feel I know them,

but I can’t describe that beauty—

even figurative language fails me.

They seem, by looks, like men I used to know,

but whose names escape me.

Time has turned their bodies greenish-yellow,

made their tunics red,

and they emit a glow as if a violet

or scarlet membrane covered them.

Time has consumed and thinned their skin

and then consumed the bones beneath the flesh.

It gnawed their flesh but left no blemish,

left them like a soul that’s innocent of sin.

It wafted over them sweet fragrances.

The summer cloud wove colors into them.

They feel ashamed when men’s eyes long for them,

and yet they sympathize with sighing souls.

Their scent delights the human soul

as insight into mysteries

delights philosophers.

Just put them on the nose of an insomniac,

and he’ll forget about his sleep.

Give them to a corpse; he’ll grab them

and enjoy them in his coffin after death.

Put them in Ahasuerus’s harem:

you couldn’t tell them from the concubines.

Cut from their garden bed they came to us

with scrawny thighs and footless.

When the master had them brought to me,

I thought that they were royal letters under seal.

Unpacked and strewn upon a tray,

jumbled on it, heaps on heaps,

they seemed like women jealous of each other,

bringing their dispute to me.

Perfect in their beauty, lacking nothing,

perfect just like everything you do,

perfect, as your heart is perfect;

pure, without transgression or deceit.

They testify that your uplifted hand

has a stake among the stars of heaven.

May your excellences strike

Days’ daughters’ cheeks and leave them stained.

May God bestow full favors on you,

give you much of crystal and brocade,

destroy your enemies and elevate

your place above all other stations.

Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin.

We’re sorry. The Posen Library’s licensing agreements prevent this text from being printed or downloaded.

Credits

Solomon Ibn Gabirol, “Speak, messenger,” from Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol, trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Archipelago Books, 2016), 237–43. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.