Speak, messenger
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.
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.
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I spent the night in agitation. It seemed as if
my eyes had been enjoined from sleeping.
The sky was like a tent with ropes
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The moon alongside heaven’s Bear
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