The Translator of Desires

This is a collection of 61 love poems, regarded as a lyrical masterwork from the late 12^th and early 13^th century, and represents the first complete English translation for over 100 years. The introduction sets the work in its cultural and personal context of Arabic Love poetry and the particular relationship at the heart of these poems about love, desire, passion and longing as well as the tension between eros and mystical love. There are extensive notes on individual poems and some essential explanations about the nature of the young girl idealised in these verses that also throw up paradoxes about the nature of the self: 'how can one pierced through the heart by love have any trace of self to be bewildered? Love consumes… who is left to be that will do? Here are some representative lines:

Their spring meadows

are desolate now

but desire for them

lives on in the heart

These are their ruins

Tears in memory

of those who melt

the soul forever….

Don't crush a man

drowned in tears

yet aflame

With ceaseless sorrow

Put down your flint,

fire-striker

Here is passion's fire

Take an ember