I don't mean to brag, but a number of my friends have been featured bloggers on Harriet for the Poetry Foundation. Cedar, Rodney, Kasey, Alli, Brandon, Brandon, Matvei, Garrett, Thom, Marie, Asiya, Silvina, Sara, Patrick, Stephanie, Dana, Eddie, Hoa, Rodrigo, Joshua, and if I keep clicking back I'll be reminded of more.
This is all to say I'm glad to be blogging for Harriet finally, on the theme of Poetry and Translation. Thanks, Shoshana! My first post is up today.
A muwashshaha of spring
By Taqī al-Dīn ibn al-Maghribī
Narcissus loves the rose so much
its eyes don't close in sleep
You see its raiment on a stem
haggard from passion
Have pity on the grief of one
whose love was so ordained!
But it's curtains for narcissus
because rose refuses
If you took pity on its state
you would pay a visit
May God arrange reunion
where you sit down with me
to recreation of our souls, ¡ay!
Fine steerage that would be!
And trim the herbs with dainty seed
and dress them up in sweetness
like mulberries discovered
at the peak of ripeness
Let waters flow once more through the canal,
burbling like nightingales
When Spring puts out the call:
"Be clothed, ye stems and branches!"
you see green outfits of the silk
promised in eternity
It's hard, in Spring, to find
in favor of the abstainer from the cup.
Festive get-togethers are Springtime's gift
and none but the boor oppose them.
Give us drink! The only tavern-goer
to be on guard against
is the one who's not wasted
But a well-aged daughter of the vine
can be rough on the insolvent man
with a buzz already on him, when he
spies a cup of it, and guzzles it
From Choice Notices of the Historical Record by Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī
Passerby, the slab piled over me is low
to the ground, nor much to see. Be that as it is,
good man, hail Philaenis! Her singing locust
was I, who used to crawl from thorn to thorn,
the reedy bug she fussed over and loved
for two whole years of my anthemic racket.
At my death, her care lived on, and over me she reared
this little monument to resourcefulness in song.
Leonidas of Tarentum (Greek Anthology 7.198)
Ironworking is one of the oldest crafts in the world. On the authority of Ibn ‘Abbas, may God be pleased with him, it is reported that a hammer, an anvil, and a set of tongs are what Adam was sent down with, peace be upon him. It is also narrated that he was sent down with myrrh, and with a shovel.
According to another report, five things of iron were sent down with Adam: an anvil, tongs, a needle, a hammer, and a mīqa‘a, which is glossed as either a whetstone, a mallet, a sledgehammer, or a tool for roughing up a millstone's grinding edge.
Another report of of Ibn ‘Abbas has it that Adam, peace be upon him, was sent down from Paradise with a bāsina. This designates a craftsman's tool or the blade of a plow; in either case, the word is not Arabic in origin.
From Fulfilment of the Aspiration to Knowledge of the Fortunes
and Lifeways of the Arabs by Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi
Glad to be reading this Thursday at the launch of Aditya Bahl's chapbook MUKT (Organism for Poetic Research, 2021).
Another verse where Abu Tammam goes wrong is the following:
The places where your tribe once stayed are vacant, I attest,
[their traces] worn away like the washa’i‘ of a mantle.
He treats washa’i‘ as if they were the mantle's bordered edges, but this is not the case. In reality, washa’i‘ are a weaver's "shuttles," which carry the coiled thread of the weft between the fibers of the warp. Dhu 'l-Rumma says [correctly]:
[The sands] are played by strenuous winds
like the weaving of a Yemeni whose washa’i‘ weave a mantle.
As for the verse of Kuthayyir,
In summer, the huts of ‘Azza's tribe were wiped away,
whose washī‘ had been renewed in a scrawling pattern [sic].
He uses washī‘ here to mean the stuffing in a gap between two things. But shuttles are for thread... and what Kuthayyir means is that [the sides and ceilings of] the huts had been re-stuffed [with grass]. This mistake is due to his inexperience of the trappings of settled life. When a Bedouin uses the wrong word for something, having never seen it first-hand, it is excusable.
For Abu Tammam, on the other hand, there is no excuse, because he belonged to sedentary civilization, and was hardly ignorant of it. But he grants himself license, [and is flagrant about it,] as you can see in another poem where he describes his own poetic work:
Jest and earnest are combined in the shuttling of its weft,
as are nobility and scurrility with grief and ecstasy.
From The Weigh-in Between the Poetry of Abu Tammam and al-Buhturi by Abu 'l-Qasim al-Amidi
Ziyad assembled the people of Kufa in order to subject them to anti-‘Alid propaganda. [This was during the month of Ramadan in the year 53 A.H./August 673 CE]. The mosque was filled, and the courtyard, and the fortified castle. ‘Abd al-Rahman said:
"I was with a group of my fellow Ansaris when, amid the tumult, I fell asleep. And in my sleep I saw something with a long neck coming toward me. It had long lashes and pendulous lips like a camel's. 'What are you?!' I said.
"It said, 'I am al-Nufād Dhu 'l-Ruqba (The Die-Off With a Neck), and I was sent to the occupant of this castle.' I awoke with a jolt, and asked my fellows, 'Did you see what I just saw?'
"'No,' they said, so I told them. [Just then,] a representative of the palace came out and said to us, 'The commander says: "Please take your leave of me. I am indisposed and cannot see you."' For the plague had struck him." And ‘Abd al-Rahman declaimed these verses (meter: basīṭ):
His plans for us were not yet complete
when the Long-Necked Die-Off came for him:
the demonic counterpart of the courtyard's master
whose blow was equal to the master's oppression.
When plague first came to Kufa, Ziyad left town. Then, when it lifted, he returned. And that is when the plague presented in [the blackening of] one of his fingers.
Sulaym said: "At his summons I went to him. He said to me, 'Oh, Sulaym, do you feel the heat that I am feeling?' 'No,' I said. He said, 'By God, the heat I feel in my body is like fire.'"
One hundred and fifty doctors were assembled around him, including three from Chosroes's court. Sulaym drew one of Chosroes's doctors aside and asked for his prognosis, The doctor told him what Ziyad had, and that he was dying. And the plague took him just as the doctor had advised.
How many times have I said, while drinking wine at dawn:
Who am I to blame others, who am drunkenness's plaything,
all alone, seconded by no one to support me,
even as the cosmos and its beings sing my praise?
This is the onset of the Beauty-Marked, is it not? Watch out
for me! Our get-together is a lofty connection.
When I am visible, the Beauty-Marked One is in view,
and when she is concealed, I'm still exposed.
When you want to see her, look at me,
and buddy, when you're with her, be on guard.
Her every meaning is my meaning, and in form
she's like me too, and my daughter and my father she is called.
By Shaykh ‘Adi ibn Musafir (meter: basīṭ)
I am informed by al-Husayn ibn Yahya, on the authority of Hammad, that Hammad's father said:
Malik ibn Abi al-Samh was staying in Mecca, at the home of a man of the Banu Makhzum who had a weaver for his slave. Someone came along and asked: "Have you heard your weaver's song?"
"No!" the man said. "Does he sing?"
"Yes," he was told, "with lyrics by Abu Dahbal al-Jumahi."
The man sent for the weaver and told him to sing it. "It's no good unless I'm at my loom," the weaver said. So his master brought Malik to the weaver's room, where the weaver sat at his loom and sang (meter: ṭawīl):
This night goes on too long. It is not lifting.
[I am harried and dragged down by worry with no relief.
All night long, angst rides me. It's like
being stubbed in the ribs with a glowing coal.]
Malik learned the song, and when he sang it, everyone took it for his composition. "By God," he would say, "it was not I. It was none but a weaver who came up with this song."
From the Book of Songs
All along the the Roman frontier, the blessed Alexander went strengthening everybody in their faith. He fed the poor as if they were his children, and taught the rich to do good works. His words struck them with such compunction that they brought forth the documents of their claims against their debtors, and burned them up before him. But some pestilent types, whose wealth was their plumage, rose up with their minds full of darkness and said to him, "Have you come to us to make us poor?" On these men who were so ungrateful for the gifts of God, the blessed one pronounced a curse, and at that fortified camp there was no rain for three years.
When the cause for Alexander's anger became known to all, they went in a single-minded body to extirpate the guilty from the camp. In terror these men took refuge in the church, and tearfully begged forgiveness for their wrongs. At this, the rest of the mob were struck with fear of winding up in the same position. It was said that the blessed Alexander had shown up in Antioch, and they agonized over this, conjecturing that he had gone there to denounce them to military high command. So they went to the bishops of the Romans, that they might intervene with the blessed Alexander through letters on their behalf. And the bishops sped their letters to the blessed one, entreating him to take pity on the residents of the camp, and to plead with God on their behalf.
The holy one cried aloud when he received their letters and learned of the community's anguish, and he spoke sorrowfully to the Lord. "Who am I, my Lord, that at my word You have visited evil on guiltless people? I shall always be grateful to You, Master, for listening to me who am a sinner. And now I beg for your compassion. Take pity on the poor, and restore their lost fruits of the past three years, that I may know Whose servant I am." [....] And it happened that in the fourth year, that camp took in a harvest like none before, just as Alexander had enjoined.
But the Lord's wrath against those pestilential men was unabated. In a matter of days, their children all died, and their herds and homes were raided by barbarians and thieves, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that it was on account of the grief they had caused the holy man.
From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.33-4
The blessed Alexander brought his picked disciples across the Euphrates River, and off they went into the Persian Desert. With no garments to change into, nor any provision but the parchments of the holy Scriptures, they kept up their rule of singing hymns night and day without pause, and their stay in the desert went on and on.
At this time began a trial of the disciples' fleshly needs, that the worthiest among them might be revealed. They went for many days with nothing to eat but tree-nuts, and did not break ranks until some thirty of them began to mutter against the blessed one. Just as happened to Moses, they said to Alexander, "Have you led us into this desert to die of hunger?" This was premeditated, for their secret desire was to return to the monastery—as the blessed one well knew. Thanks to the intervention of the Holy Spirit, their desire could not be dissimulated from him, who was in truth a second Moses, faithful to God in all His house. Calling them to account, and addressing them like the faithless reprobates they were, he gave them leave to return to the monastery he had left behind, saying in a great voice: "Trust me, brothers, that the Lord watches over us, and will refute your lack of faith this very day."
They had gone but a short way when the holy man's words were fulfilled by God. For it was then that He caused a detachment of Roman tribunes and soldiers to come forth, loaded with goods on God's behalf, to summon the brothers to bless their fortifications. (Between the Roman and Persian terrirories there are fortifications set to hold off the barbarians, at a distance of ten or twenty mile-markers apart from each other.) Seeing them from afar, the deserting brothers realized that it was just as the divine father had spoken, and their faith was reinforced. Some of them fell on their faces in repentance, and rejoined the brothers. The rest went away to the inner desert, where they dwelled until the end of their lives.
From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.32-3
By Tahar Hammami (1947-2009)
I see the palm tree walking in the streets
A lofty one, with head held high
The overthrower and defier
Did you see, on that brave day,
the leaves of the palm
as it made its way?
Did you see the palm of the oasis
towering above the square
or the wounded, picking shot from their chest
and binding up the tear?
★ ★ ★
The necks of castor plants bow low
The squill bulb's leaves are folded
★ ★ ★
I see the palm tree walking
in the thick of traffic walking
in the thick of night it's walking
In the thick of an attack it walks
into the sun with eyes lashed shut
onto a promising harvest
The palm is right. You who forget!
Cast off delusion and wear its dress
The palm tree does not cry
The palm tree sings
with sparrows and children
with the waters of the sea
with mountain wheatfields
with the lightning
with the ferment of autumn
and winter rains
I see the palm tree walking in the streets
with the iron of the factories
and the produce of the fields
Long nights and painful incidents
notwithstanding
I see the palm tree standing tall
I see it's not receding
(1981)
Alexander made another search for what to request of God, and found in Gospel that the disciples appointed to proclaim the kingdom of our lord Jesus Christ had numbered seventy. And he asked of God that this same number of faithful zealots, capable of broadcasting the word of God to the heathen Gentiles, be appointed from his own disciples. And this too God gave him, appointing out of Alexander's disciples seventy who were powerful in faith just as the holy man had asked.
I will tell the true story of how this came about. When his eight squadrons, arrayed in perfect faith, had with joy and gladness in their hearts been sending prayers and hymns up to God for quite some time, Alexander thought to himself and said, "Let no complacency infect this mighty suspension of earthly cares." And he returned to imposing harsh asperities upon his person, as was his way. And he convened a hundred and fifty noble soldiers of Christ who were truly armored with the breastplate of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Holy Spirit. He called each of them by name and said, "Brothers, let us test ourselves and the perfection of our faith. Let us cross that fearsome desert of the faithless, and show through our works that we believe in God with all our hearts, and not just in His word."
The original plan was to go to Egypt, and school the faithless of that place whose trust was in [the idols of] their own handwork. And his true disciples committed wholeheartedly to following him as soon as they heard the plan. But the Holy Spirit prevented this venture, and the blessed Alexander resolved to quit the monastery without telling anyone. "I am going to look in on our brothers in the desert," he told them instead, and assigned one Trophimus, a calm and gentle holy man of God, to be their abbot. And with his usual exhortations and a prayer, he bid them all farewell and left. And then he took back off across the Euphrates River.
From The Life of Alexander the Sleepless III.31-2
