The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 22. “…a beloved boy's cheek with sweat…”

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Many a cup adorned the wingèd darkness

With a coat of light until the dawn's ray;

Many a night I drank to a young man,[i]

Who had a sleepy look that mine kept awake;

The cup hid from the eyes till I thought

It feared from his stare what was fearful to me;

It shone in his hand's purity

Like the sun's beams greeting the sky,

As if the cup in his fingers were

A saffron narcissus rising among leaves;

It appeared like a sun, with his mouth a sunset,

With his cupbearer hand resurrecting the sunrise.

When the cup went down to his mouth,

It leaves compassion on his cheeks.

This shower in cloudy downpours is

A friend to gardens singing and drinking,

As if earth were his dungeon, and

His growth, an innocent in prison.

The lightning honors its borders

With a colored coat when it flashes,

As if its dark cloud were

The black made into a spotted horse,

As if the wind as it blows

Drives the magpies into the sky;

For here the night-wandering stars stray

In confusion, not knowing their own paths.

Lightning lights its lamp;

The face of the darkness is dawning,

And thunder sings the bass part

As the cups of clouds take root.

The sun comes to entice us

And wrapped with its rays, the drowning,

As if the sun-reviving breath

Were a bright, passionately loved boy;

As if the rose shining on the dew

Were a beloved boy's cheek with sweat

Over which burst-sunlight gilds like saffron.

I thought such light hid its love for the rose,

The way two lovers quick embracing act,

The one bashful, the other fleet of foot.

But, oh those stars in the garden

That climb from the beds to on high

And look on the morning sun

Like flower buds trapping eyes,

Be like the dewdrops as they flow,

Stayed like quicksilver on the leaves.

—al-Sharif al-Taliq,[ii]

circa 980

[after Arthur Wormhoudt]

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