Poems XV–XIX: Memories of His Brother

1041–1042

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The final set of Samuel ha-Nagid’s mourning poems for the loss of his older brother Isaac begins with Samuel relating his own loss to that of another family and then moves through Samuel’s feelings during the first year of mourning. Throughout, ha-Nagid is torn between the natural feelings that subside with the passage of time and the guilt associated with moving on from his loss. Although reminders of his brother are ubiquitous, ha-Nagid continues to curse the ephemeral nature of life and the mastery that Time (a common medieval term for fate) maintains over man. In the closing poem, he asks for divine grace and forgiveness and accepts God’s role in his brother’s illness. Ha-Nagid marks the end of this unusual set of poems with a prayer that his brother merit resurrection.

Illustration of a bearded, crying man in a robe and turban, his head surrounded by a gold halo, crouching beside a shrouded figure, also haloed, lying on a wooden bed.

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XV

One day some time after this, when he was visiting a family that had lost a brother too, he cried bitterly with them and thought:

A close-knit family,

Clustered like stars,

The Dipper, or the Hyades,

And he their first and brightest.

Why, they swore by him,

Lived by his word!

Well, Death has him now,

And though they grieve for him

And rue their fate,

He’s gone.

I thought of you today, my mother’s son,

When, come to condole,

I joined my voice to theirs and wept with them.

In truth, had any eye of theirs been dry,

I would have been the first to chide

Such coldness,

Since every tear those mourners cried

Fell, in my heart, for you.

XVI

One day he received a letter and thought:

I think of my brother and of his letters to me,

Each like water for my thirsty soul.

A letter came today—but not from him.

O memory like fire that guts all!

XVII

And when nearly a year had passed since his brother’s death, he thought:

O traitor Time, you pass,

And longing for my brother passes not!

Yet it was you who stole him—

Will you not return him by-and-by?

His death was like a darkening in my eye.

If I am like a blind man, are you glad?

For you, my Isaac,

Gone to where no man comes back from,

My heart weeps and is sad.

Your death has made me wise,

Though in your lifetime you deluded me.

I thought that you would live forever for me,

But Time thought differently.

XVIII

And on the first anniversary of his brother’s death, he thought:

Twelve months gone by, and still the huntsman Death

Holds you ensnared! Or do you like his clay so well,

Find worms such better company than men,

That you would stay?

Just think, my dear,

If you could shake the dust off, drop in on your old haunts, chat with old friends again, and let me tell you of my latest conquests!

If only a man—flesh putrified, bones dry as twigs, a prisoner (soul heaven-prised) of earth, a meal for maggots, a banquet of stuffed shrouds—could do it!

XIX

And when at last his grief had passed and, consoled, he mourned no more, he thought:

Praise be to God who hears all prayers and whom all men should praise;

Who grants mankind His kindness as the sun

Bestows on all its all-beholden rays;

Who makes all things hard, gross, recalcitrant,

Seem yielding and inviting at the start

(Like blades of grass; like occupations, trades; like everything newborn, though it as tangled as an oak tree grows to be)

Except for melancholy,

Which lusty comes into this world and fades;

For if it did not lighten in men’s hearts,

No heart could keep from breaking from its weight.

No tongue can count or words recount God’s grace to men!

For I,

Who in my grief declared that of despair my soul would die

Before it reached the end of Sorrow’s hemmed-in way,

Now walk abroad in comfort,

My sorrow sloughed away

As my poor brother’s flesh is in the grave;

And though compassion in my bowels still does stir

Until I groan like many men possessed,

Most times I am like one who in his heart

Unburdened is of troubles laid to rest.

Thus, the Lord sickens and strikes down,

And heals and quickens him whom He has stricken.

May He who shrouds Himself in nebulae

And to the earth my brother’s shrouds consigned

Forgive him every sin

And mercifully his virtue keep in mind.

And may the merits of his fathers stand him in good stead

As his will stand me now that he is dead!

Translated by Hillel Halkin.

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Credits

Samuel ha-Nagid, “The Death of Isaac,” trans. Hillel Halkin, from Hillel Halkin, Grand Things to Write a Poem On: A Verse Autobiography of Shmuel Hanagid (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2000), 79–83 [poems XV–XIX]. Used with permission of the publisher. Image: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Manuscripts, Arabe 3929, fol. 78r, detail.

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

Poems XV–XIX: Memories of His Brother

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XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

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Poems XV–XIX: Memories of His Brother

About This Entry

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

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