In Dhu Salam
by qisasukhra
The twelfth poem, بذي سلم والدير من حاضر الحمى, from Ibn Arabi’s ترجمان الأشواق
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In Dhu Salam and the monastery
by Hima
are gazelles that offer you the sun
in images, as idols
I watch stars coursing
and I serve a chapel
and I guard a garden
its bright page in spring,
now called the gazelle’s herdsman
now monk and now astrologer,
my beloved is now three, once one
just as the persons were become
one in essence. Come
.
my friend, do not refuse to hear me
Ghazala, Disk, Illuming Sun
for gazelles circling round the idols
Gazelles, necks craning
Faces for the sun
White idol’s breast and wrist
in which way I have dressed the branches
and conferred natures on the garden.
a smiling mouth on lightning
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qisasukhra 