When I sent you that knife
12th Century
When I sent you that knife, I thought its name was an omen, and indeed the augury and presage became true: the knife signifies that you are inhabiting my heart, its cutting signifies rupture and distance.
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This poem was written in Arabic and represents the only extant example of Solomon’s poetry in that language. The version we have today survives via a thirteenth-century anthology of Arabic poetry by Ibn Sa‘īd al-Maghribī (d. 1286), who cites Solomon as the only notable poet from Marrakesh. In the poem, formatted as a prose paragraph, Solomon describes sending a knife to his love.
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Early Medieval Poetry
7th to 12th Century
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