A love poem

11 January 2008 in translation by Sam | 4 comments

אֱהִי כֹּפֶר לְעֹפֶר קָם בְּלַיִל
לְקוֹל כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָבִים מְטִיבִים
אֲשֶׁר רָאָה בְּיָדִי כוֹס וְאָמַר
שְׁתֵה מִבֵּין שְׂפָתַי דַּם עֲנָבִים
וְיָרֵחַ כְּמוֹ יוֹד נִכְתְּבָה עַל
כְּסוּת שַׁחַר בְּמֵימֵי הַזְּהָבִים.

I’d die for him, the fawn who woke at night
To the beautiful voice of strings and flutes,
Who saw the goblet in my hand, and spoke:
‘Drink, from between my lips, the blood of grapes!’
The moon looked like a letter yud inscribed
Upon the cloak of dawn in golden ink.

—Samuel ibn Naghrela (Shmuel Ha-Nagid, 993–1056)

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4 comments

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11 January 2008 at 11:00 pm

Elisabeth

Elisabeth’s avatar

Oh, yeah, I read that poem last spring. Nicely rendered.

Pederastic…I suppose so, in a sense. You know there’s supposed to be a lively debate as to whether these poems actually expressed some experience of the writers or were pure literary convention. But of course poetry that are pederastic in this sense are so ubiquitous in his milieu that one doesn’t even think about it.

11 January 2008 at 11:02 pm

Sam

Sam’s avatar

And of course, we all know what we want the answer to be, especially in light of later attempts to rationalize this kind of poetry as allegorical (as happened with Shmuel Ha-nagid’s son).

13 January 2008 at 7:08 pm

Older

Older’s avatar

Is it possible that you meant “faun”? A fawn is a baby deer, a faun is a woodland sprite.

13 January 2008 at 7:12 pm

Sam

Sam’s avatar

Nope, I meant ‘fawn’: the poet is comparing the object of his love to a young (male) deer. The problem of how to render this in English, is, of course, a vexed one, what with the general unfamiliarity of the word ‘fawn’, and the unexpectedness it engenders when used metaphorically, as it is here. One of the best renderings I’ve seen was ‘that fawn of a boy’, but it’s too cumbersome for my purposes here.