Ayin Nedivah ('Generous Eye'): Qasida for Solomon Ibn Ghiyyat
I can’t stop crying.
My eyes are like peddler women.
What they buy is: you are gone.
What they sell is: tears,
And business is good:
Enough tears for a jeweled necklace.
I am weeping here in the ruins
Where lovers used to live.
I can’t hear a thing.
I can’t say a word.
Wasn’t it enough for you
To break our home when you left?
Why did you break my heart?
The place doesn’t even look the same.
I don’t even recognize it.
Only my heart tells me if I am in the right place;
My eyes deny it.
Good luck on your journey.
You take with you the tears that I gave you
And my sleep that you stole.
I could forget my lover
Were it not for the stars
Which remind me.
The moon is conspiring against the sun, her king.
She thinks he has gone traveling in the Western Sea
And drowned.
Unsheathing her swords of lightning
She strikes the earth’s back with her staffs of fire.
The lightning bolts dance,
Swirl their golden skirts and sway.
The earth joins battle in its armor of darkness;
The stars hurl their javelins of light.
The moon flees and grows dim,
But now she stands on the face of the sky
Like a golden brooch on a cloak,
Her face red with the dust of battle
Like the face of a queen leading her armies.
I am a shepherd. My flock is the stars;
I herd them, leading them home.
They move as slowly as if they were sick or lame.
I weep for the Twins, who are always apart.
I am jealous of the Pleiades, who are together for eternity.
Does Orion reach out his hand to touch his neighbor?
[...] Read more
poem by Yehudah HaLevi
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
