390
Has paid his debts to me:
If
you come here I'll take you to pieces
With both hands.
Or do you only want to be
The bird that proclaims
it is time for us
to
part?
PARTISAN REVIEW
Pass the night with five girls, if you so choose,
Committing all kinds of indecencies,
But you deserve
to
be quite alone
With the sun and the moon.
This poem was carried back to al-Kutandi, who, when the messenger
arrived, had just fallen into a cesspit. Everybody was laughing at him. He
told the messenger: "Let them know what happened." Hafsa and Abu ja'far
had a good laugh, too, when they heard about this. Then they wrote to al–
Kutandi a poem in the
alimon
manner (writing alternate lines):
We have been freed from that poet
By someone falling in the shit:
Go back to your pit, son of shit,
No matter who might have made it.
And if you come back to see us one day,
Most vile and despicable of men , you'll see
That such is the luck in store for you
if you stroll around with your head in the air.
You fuddyduddy, shit-lover, amber-hater,
May God prevent you from having visitors
Until they come to bury you!
(Here we leave al-Maqqari.)
* * *
To none of the following poems (first Abu ja'far's, then poems 7
through 16) can we assign exact dates within the political scene suggested by
poems 3 and 4 and by Abu ja'far's "Lady, whose name.... " All together,
however, indicate a convergence of interests that are by no means ghostly.
Passion and politics are set on a collision course.
Abu ja'far writes to Hafsa about a night in the park called Hawr
Mu'Ammal:
May God watch over a night spent without anyone watching,
A night which hid us in the Hawr Mu'Ammal.
From Nayd an aroma was wafted over,
Shivering with the scent of carnations.
A turtle dove was cooing in the trees.
