(ca. 1075–1141)
|
“A light thing would it
seem to me to leave all the good things of |
A SELECTION OF HIS
POEMS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Ayin Nedivah (“Generous Eye”): Qasida for Solomon Ibn Ghiyat
From
Jehuda Halevi’s Songs to Zion
God,
Whom Shall I Compare to Thee?
Five
Translations by Franz Rosenzweig
From
Zion to Prophecy: A Conversation with Yehuda Halevi
Links
to Other Web Sites with Information on Yehuda Halevi
۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞۞
You have enslaved me with
your lovely body;
You have put me in a kind
of prison.
Since the day we parted,
I have found nothing that
is like your beauty.
So I comfort myself with a
ripe apple—
Its fragrance reminds me of
the myrrh of your breath,
Its shape of your breasts,
its color
Of the color that used to
rise to your cheeks.
Translated by Robert Mezey
Copyright © Robert Mezey, 1973.
Used with permission of the
author.
۞
Let the morning pursue me
with the wind that senses
her body.
Let the clouds carry my
message.
Then might she yield.
Lying in the constellation
of The Bear,
have pity, gazelle, on him
who must fly
to the stars to reach you.
Carl Rakosi
After Jehudah Halevi
From “Eight Songs and Meditations (1971-1975),”
in The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi
(Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine, 1986).
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley. Reprinted with permission of
Marilyn Kane, for the estate of Carl Rakosi, AKA Callman Rawley.
۞
Cups without wine are low
things
Like a pot thrown to the
ground,
But brimming with the
juice, they shine
Like body and soul.
Translated by Robert Mezey
Copyright © Robert Mezey, 1973.
Used by permission of the author.
۞
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
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?
Or to measure the distance between the spheres?
Where is the sun? Has its chariot broken a wheel?
Has the road it travels been cut off?
The gates of the East—are they locked?
When will ebony turn to pearls?
When will this black veil be lifted and the white cheek revealed?
I hate this night.
The moon looks to me
Like a scab on the skin of an African.
When I see the first tongues of fire, I shall rejoice.
A night like an African.
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”
A sky like a leopard,
Spotted with stars.
Dark forevermore.
I give up. My eyes will never see the warm sun. Too late.
A breeze is stealing between the trees,
Whispering to the willows a rumor of a secret love.
The birds are twittering.
Far away, a pigeon-dove murmurs a poem. As the night folds her
wings,
A light rain of beauty is falling,
Raining down the dew of love like manna.
There is a fragrance like incense or myrrh.
Has Solomon sent me a poem, perfumed, wrapped to a pigeon-dove’s
leg?
From the poem’s lines of black letters, greetings break forth like
the dawn,
Light amid the grey morning,
Letters ink-black as night, but words bright as the dawn,
Like a girl who hides her cheeks behind her dark hair.
A poem not just perfumed but mined from the hills of perfume!
“Comely am I and black,”
Pitch-black letters like the black tents of Kedar
On paper like the white tents of Solomon.
Marvels never seen: letters carved from fiery rock.
Shall these pages contain the flame of his words
Or will they feed the fire? When did fire not conquer straw?
These words are locked now within my heart,
Engraved there letter for letter
Placed there forever.
His poem is like a tapestry woven by the hands of thought,
Framed with beauty,
Worn like a crown.
His poem is like a song of jeweled fruit,
A song, a poem for the reader to taste.
My tongue shall sing it on a glass of wine.
Here, for you, are the fruits of my poetry
Ripe after months of waiting.
But for my love you need never wait.
A poem from your friend,
Whose fame has waited
Until after his best days.
Now he is so well known
That what he does not write
May be an oral tradition.
He follows generous friends
And seeks out their company.
He is never far away.
If they are a hand, he is their thumb.
Men sleep until the dawn awakes them,
But his soul is awake and his heart wakes the dawn,
To seek the love of his friend,
Pure love, inside and out.
Take from my clumsy lips these golden words of poetry;
Place them around your neck.
Wear them like a bracelet.
For they are daughters of love, mined from the hill of love,
Given to you for your love like a dowry.
The morning breeze warms the face of every lover,
But to me it shall always say: All is well with Solomon. Shalom.
Translated by Joseph Davis
Copyright © 2006 Joseph Davis.
Used by permission of the author.
۞
The stars of the world have
joined to-day.
‘Mid the host on high none
are found like these.
The Pleiads desire such
unity,
For no breath can come
between them.
The star of the east hath
come to the west;
He hath found the sun among
the daughters thereof.
He hath set up a bower of
thick branches;
He
hath made of them a tent for the sun.
Translated by Nina Salaman
from Heinrich Brody, ed., Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1924, 1952).
Copyright © 1952 by The Jewish
Publication Society of
۞
The night when the fair maiden revealed the likeness of her form to me,
The warmth of her cheeks, the veil of her hair,
Golden like a topaz, covering
A brow of smoothest crystal—
She was like the sun making red in her rising
The clouds of dawn with the flame of her light.
Translated by
Nina Salaman
from Heinrich Brody, ed., Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1924, 1952).
Copyright
© 1952 by The Jewish Publication Society of
۞
So we must be divided; sweetest, stay,
Once more, mine-eyes would seek
thy glance’s light.
At night I shall recall thee Thou, I pray,
Be mindful of the days of our
delight.
Come to me in my dreams, I ask of thee,
And even in my dreams be gentle unto me.
If thou shouldst send me greeting in the grave,
The cold breath of the grave
itself were sweet;
Oh, take my life, my life, ‘tis all I have,
If it should make thee live, I
do entreat.
I think that I shall hear when I am dead,
The rustle of thy gown, thy footsteps overhead.
Translated by Amy Levy
(from the German of Abraham Geiger)
From Lady Katie Magnus, Jewish Portraits (1888;
Rptd.
(Also
see Melvyn New, ed., The Complete Novels
and Selected Writings
of Amy Levy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993).
۞
A dove of rarest worth
And sweet exceedingly;
Alas, why does she turn
And fly so far from me?
In my fond heart a tent,
Should aye preparèd be.
My poor heart she has caught
With magic spells and wiles.
I do not sigh for gold,
But for her mouth that smiles;
Her hue it is so bright,
She half makes blind my sight,
* * * *
The day at last is here
Filled full of love’s sweet fire
The twain shall soon be one,
Shall stay their fond desire.
Ah! would my tribe could chance
On such deliverance.
Translated by Amy Levy
(probably from the German of Abraham Geiger)
From Lady Katie Magnus, Jewish Portraits (1888;
Rptd.
(Also
see Melvyn New, ed., The Complete Novels
and Selected Writings
of Amy Levy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993).
۞
On the wind
in the cool of the evening
I send greetings to a friend.
I ask him only to remember the day
of our parting when we made a covenant
of love by an apple tree.
Carl Rakosi
After Jehudah
Halevi
From “Eight Songs and Meditations (1971-1975),”
in The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi
(Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine, 1986).
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley. Reprinted with permission
of Marilyn Kane, for the estate of Carl Rakosi, AKA Callman Rawley.
۞
TO THE
SOUL
Oh, you that sleep in the bosom of
childhood, how long will you rest there? Know that youth is shaken off like
straw! Do you think boyhood lasts for ever? Get up, go out and see the grey
heralds, who have come to rebuke you. Shake off Time as birds shake off the
dew-drops of the night. Soar like a swallow to find freedom from your sins and
from the vagaries of Fortune, that rage like a sea. Pursue your King, at one
with the souls who flock towards the bounty of God.
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi
(Allen Lane, 1981). Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981. 
۞
How long will you remain a
boy?
Dawns must end.
Behold the angels of old
age.
Shake off temporal things
then
the way a bird shakes off
the night dew.
Dart like a swallow
from the raging ocean
of daily events
and pursue the Lord
in the intimate company
of souls flowing
into His virtue.
Carl Rakosi
After Jehudah Halevi
From “Eight Songs and Meditations
(1971-1975),”
in The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi
(Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation/University of Maine, 1986).
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley. Reprinted with permission
of Marilyn Kane, for the estate of Carl Rakosi, AKA Callman Rawley.
۞
My heart is in the east,
and I in the uttermost west—
How can I find savour in
food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows
and my bonds, while yet
A light thing would it seem
to me to leave all the good things of
Seeing how precious in mine
eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.
Translated by Nina Salaman
from Heinrich Brody, ed., Selected Poems of Jehudah Halevi
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1924, 1952).
Copyright © 1952 by The Jewish
Publication Society of
۞
FROM
JEHUDA HALEVI’S SONGS TO
My heart in the East
and I at the farthest West:
how can I taste what I eat
or find it sweet
while
is in the cords of
bound by the Arab?
Beside the dust of
all the good of
and a light thing to leave
it.
And if it is now only a
land of howling beasts and owls
was it not so
when given to our fathers—
all of it only a heritage
of thorns and thistles?
But they walked in it—
His name in their hearts,
sustenance!—
as in a park among flowers.
In the midst of the sea
when the hills of it slide
and sink
and the wind
lifts the water like
sheaves—
now a heap of sheaves and then
a floor for the threshing—
and sail and planks shake
and the hands of the
sailors are rags,
and no place for flight but
the sea,
and the ship is hidden in
waves
like a theft in the thief’s
hand,
suddenly the sea is smooth
and the stars shine on the
water.
Wisdom and knowledge—except
to swim—
have neither fame nor favor
here;
a prisoner of hope, he gave
his spirit to the winds,
and is owned by the sea;
between him and death—a
board.
the few that are left?
I cry out like the jackals
when I think of their grief;
but, dreaming of the end of
their captivity,
I am like a harp for your
songs.
*There was some question in my mind if I should try to use rhyme as Jehuda Halevi did or at least follow his rhythms. Franz Rosenzweig, translating him into German, said it was sheer laziness not to do both. Perhaps. But the reproduction of a meter in another language does not necessarily have the effect it had in the original: rhyme and rhythm stirring in the Hebrew may be cloying and merely tiresome in English; it may be light instead of grave and so clever as to be nothing else. And it is of interest to note that Jehuda Halevi himself said (Jewish Publication Society’s edition, p. xxii): “It is but proper that mere beauty of sound should yield to lucidity of speech.” —C. R. [Charles Reznikoff’s note on his translation.]
Charles Reznikoff
From Charles Reznikoff, The Poems of Charles Reznikoff, 1918-1975,
edited by Seamus Cooney (
Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Charles Reznikoff.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
۞
Beautiful
heights, city of a great King,
From
the western coast my desire burns towards thee.
Pity
and tenderness burst in me, remembering
Thy
former glories, thy temple now broken stones.
I
wish I could fly to thee on the wings of an eagle
And
mingle my tears with thy dust.
I
have sought thee, love, though the King is not there
And
instead of
Let
me fall on thy broken stones and tenderly kiss them—
The
taste of thy dust will be sweeter than honey to me.
After Halevi
Robert Mezey
from Robert Mezey, Collected Poems
(
Copyright © Robert Mezey, 2000. Used by permission of the publisher.
۞
Shalom, Mount Avarim.
Blessed be your slopes.
Somewhere on you the
greatest of men was gathered,
Sacred bones now buried
deep in your side.
If you do not know him, ask
the
Ask the green bush, ask
Sinai, and they will tell you:
“He was not a man of words,
but he did God’s work.”
I have vowed to visit you
soon, God willing.
Translated by Robert Mezey
Copyright © Robert Mezey, 1973.
Used by permission of the author.
۞
The lovely doe, far from her home, whose
lover is angry—why did she
laugh? She laughed at the daughter of
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi
(Allen Lane, 1981). Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981.
۞
TO
O Sleeper whose heart is awake, burning
and raging, now wake and go
forth, and walk in the light of My
presence. Rise, and ride on! A star has
come forth for you, and he who has lain in
the pit will go up to the top of
Sinai. Let them not exult, those who say,
'
is in
now I rage, now I consent—but who has more
compassion than I have for
My children?
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi
(Allen Lane, 1981). Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981.
THE
HOME OF LOVE
Ever since You were the home of love for
me, my love has lived where You have lived. Because of You, I have delighted in
the wrath of my enemies; let them be, let them torment the one whom You
tormented. It was from You that they learned their wrath, and I love them, for
they hound the wounded one whom You struck down. Ever since You despised me, I
have despised myself, for I will not honour what You despise. So be it, until
Your anger has passed, and again You will redeem
Your own possession, which You once
redeemed.**
**From the bondage of
Translated by T. Carmi
from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi (Allen Lane, 1981).
Copyright © T. Carmi, 1981.
۞
O Lord, where shall I find Thee?
All-hidden and exalted is Thy place;
And where shall I not find Thee?
Full of Thy glory is the infinite space.
Found near-abiding ever,
He made the earth’s ends, set their utmost bar;
Unto the nigh a refuge,
Yea, and a trust to them who wait afar.
Thou sittest throned between the Cherubim,
Thou dwellest high above the cloud rack dim.
Praised by Thine hosts and yet beyond their praises
Forever far exalt;
The endless whirl of worlds may not contain Thee,
How, then, one heaven’s vault?
And Thou, withal uplifted
O’er man, upon a mighty throne apart,
Art yet forever near him,
Breath of his spirit, life-blood of his heart.
His own mouth speaketh testimony true
That Thou his Maker art alone; for who
Shall say he hath not seen Thee? Lo! the heavens
And all their host aflame
With glory show Thy fear in speech unuttered,
With silent voice proclaim.
Longing I sought