Translated from Greek by Elizabeth A.S. Dawes
ATTAR
from The Conference of the Birds
A pauper fell in love with a famous Egyptian king. When news of it reached the royal ear, the king summoned the deluded lover. “Since you have fallen in love with a king,” he said, “you have but two choices. Either leave this town and country, or give up your head for my love. Which do you choose: exile or decapitation?” The pauper in love was not a resolute man, so he chose banishment. When that indignant, penniless man left the royal presence, the king immediately commanded: “Cut off his head.” A courtier said: “But your highness, the man is innocent; why do you order his death?” The king replied: “Because he loved me with insincerity. If he were a man truly in love, he would have chosen to stay and lose his head. If you value your head more than your love, then for you the practice of love is a crime. If the beggar had chosen execution, I would have bestowed upon him honours and would have myself put on the garb of servitude for him. In the face of such devotion even the world’s monarch must become a slave to such a lover. However, since the beggar wavered in his love, his claim to love was false. He was double-dealing in love; beheading is what he deserves. If you say, ‘I love’ and then follow it with, ‘but I want to keep my head too,’ you are a liar and pretender. Let my subjects beware, so that no one dares to boast falsely of true love for me.”
Leaving your self is annihilation.
When awareness of this annihilation
is annihilated, you’ll find eternal life.
If your heart is anxious and panics
when it must cross the bridge over raging fire,
don’t worry because that fire
is only a lamp’s flame,
smoking soot, shadowy as a crow’s feather.
When the oil burns, it loses itself,
and so emerges from its own self.
Yes, it burns, but it also yields charcoal
for ink to write the words of the Beloved.
Translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé
DANTE
Cacciaguida’s Prophecy
“While I was in the company of Virgil
High on the mountain that heals many souls,
And while I climbed down through the world of death,
“Foreboding words were said to me concerning
My future life, although I feel myself
So squarely set to face the blows of chance
“That I willingly would be content to hear
What fortune now draws near for me, because
An arrow seen beforehand has less shock.”
I spoke this answer to that same bright light
That previously had spoken to me, and so,
As Beatrice wished, my own wish was confessed.
Not in dark sayings, with which foolish people
Of old were once ensnared, before the Lamb
Of God who takes away our sins was slain,
But in clear words and with exact discourse
That fatherly love made his reply to me,
Contained in and shown out of his own smile:
“Contingency, which does not stretch beyond
The meagre volume of your world of matter,
Is fully pictured in the eternal vision;
“Yet thence it takes on no necessity,
No more than would a ship which sails downstream
Depend upon the eyes which mirror it;
“And thence, as to the ear sweet harmony
Comes from an organ, to my sight the time
Comes that already waits in store for you.
“As Hippolytus was driven out of Athens
Through the treachery and spite of his stepmother,
So you are destined to depart from Florence.
“Thus it was willed and thus already plotted,
And soon it shall be done by him who plans it
There where Christ every day is bought and sold.
“The common cry, as is the wont, will blame
The injured party, but the vengeance which
The truth demands will witness to the truth.
“You shall leave everything most dearly loved:
This is the first one of the arrows which
The bow of exile is prepared to shoot.
“You shall discover how salty is the savour
Of someone else’s bread, and how hard the way
To come down and climb up another’s stairs.
“And what will weigh down on your shoulders most
Will be the bad and brainless company
With whom you shall fall down into this ditch.
“For all shall turn ungrateful, all insane
And impious against you, but soon after
Their brows, and not your own, shall blush for it.
So that it shall enhance your reputation
To have become a party to yourself.
“First refuge and first place of rest for you
Shall be in the great Lombard’s courtesy,
Who bears the sacred bird perched on the ladder
“And who shall hold you in such kind regard
That between you, in contrast with the others,
The granting will be first and asking last.
“With him you shall see one who at his birth
Was so imprinted by this star of strength
That men will take note of his noble deeds.
“Not yet have folk observed his worthiness
By reason of his age: these wheeling spheres
Have only for nine years revolved around him.
“But ere the Gascon cons high-riding Henry,
Some sparks of virtue shall show forth in him
By hard work and by caring naught for money.
“His bounty shall be so widespread hereafter
That the tongues, even of his enemies,
Will not be able to keep still about him.
“Look you to him and his beneficence.
Through him shall many folk find change of fortune,
Rich men and beggars shifting their positions.
“And you shall bear this written in your mind
Of him, but tell it not…” — and he told things
Beyond belief of those who witness them.
Then added, “Son, these are the glossaries
On what was told to you: behold the snares
Concealed by a few circlings of the sun!
“Yet be not envious against your neighbours,
For your life shall extend much longer than
The punishment of their perniciousness.”
When this saintly soul showed by his silence
That he had set the woof across the warp
Which I had held in readiness for him,
I ventured, like someone who seeks advice,
In his confusion, from another person
Who sees and wills straightforwardly and loves:
“I clearly see, my father, how time spurs
Towards me to strike me such a blow as falls
The heaviest on him who heeds it least.
“So it is well I arm myself with foresight,
That if the dearest place be taken from me,
I’ll not lose all the others, through my verse.”
Translated from Italian by James Finn Cotter
JOHN BARBOUR
from The Bruce of Bannockburn
Bruce to his lodgings went anon.
The little respite he had won
You may be certain made him glad.
His steward instantly he bade
Provide his men in every way
Their entertainment for the day.
Himself would in his chamber be
A long while in strict privacy
Attended by his clerk alone.
As soon as e’er the steward had gone
To carry out his lord’s
behest,
The Bruce without a moment’s rest,
Keeping his foemen in the dark,
Mounted on horseback with his clerk.
He rode by night, he rode by day,
Halting but little on the way,
Until, ere fifteen days were passed,
They saw Lochmaben’s walls at last.
His brother Edward there they found,
Who viewed with wonder, I’ll be bound,
This journey hasty and concealed.
The Bruce to him the cause revealed,
How, to escape King Edward’s might,
He had resolved on sudden flight.
Now, as it happened, on that day
The Comyn was not far away:
’Twas at Dumfries he then abode.
The Bruce took horse and thither rode,
Firmly resolved to pay him well
For that which he had dared to tell.
From his resolve he did not falter:
Confronting Comyn at the altar
Of Gray Friars’ Church with laughing face,
He showed him in that holy place
The fatal pact, and with a knife
Stabbed him and took away his life.
Sir Edmund Comyn also died,
And many mighty men beside.
However there are some who say
This happened in another way;
But, whatsoever caused the strife,
Thereby the Comyn lost his life,
And Bruce did evil to defy
The holy altar’s sanctity,
For which such troubles him befell,
That no romance did ever tell
Of man that was so sore distressed
And was at last by fortune blessed.
Now going back, I must relate
How England’s monarch sat in state
With all his peers in Parliament,
And for the Bruce a summons sent.
Knights, who the royal mandate bore,
Appear before the Bruce’s door,
But call in vain. The servants say
That by command since yesterday
In his own room their lord had been
By all except his clerk unseen.
When, after knocking long in vain,
They found they could no answer gain,
They broke the door, but, though they sought
All through the room, discovered nought.
So they returned and told the King,
Why they had failed the Bruce to bring.
At his escape the King grieved sore,
And, filled with wrath, he stoutly swore
That Bruce both hanged and drawn should be.
He swore with confidence; but he,
The Bruce, hoped it might not be so,
And when, as ye already know,
In church he had the Comyn slain,
He to his castle went again.
Thence sent he messengers to ride
And carry letters far and wide
Bidding his friends come to his aid
And join the force he had arrayed,
For he now purposed to be crowned.
Translated from Scots by Michael MacMillan
MICHAEL MARULLUS
De exilio suo
So often I fled the enemy’s chains,
And snatched my soul from fate. Why?
Not to stay here, the sole survivor of my bloodline
Cruel is the one willing to outlast his homeland!
And not because my mind loves the light so much
it would prefer death by slaughter to exile!
No, I did it for this: that I, ancient offspring of the Marulli,
Not be forced into slavery, snatched by the cruel enemy,
Just a child.
If, seized far from home in the land of Scythia,
I suffered the arrogant orders of a Bessian
And endured cruel commands and a mighty master,
My freedom nothing but an empty word,
It would have been more fitting to serve a harsh tyrant
And to endure with my native land
All grief to be endured.
It is something, at least, to see the ashes
And all the memorials of your people,
The authority of ancestors won by authority,
And to enjoy your native air while breath remains
And not be mocked and scorned far off in a foreign land.
True, all dignity of birth and family is cast off
As soon as you step on foreign land an exile.
Nobility and virtuous lineage, a house which gleams
With ancient honours — these are no help now.
But once, when the might of our country reigned,
The whole world was open to us as guests.
Then, ah then we should have exhaled our final breath
Young and old together. We should not have survived
that evil. Then we should have recalled
our ancestral spirit and the virtue we inherited
And rushed to be slaughtered by noble wounds.
Liberty cannot be preserved except by our native Mars.
That was the only path sure to bring salvation.
May he die who first exulted in arms!
If they are resolute, a small band of men is enough
However small, it is enough if the soldiers are fierce
When armed with their grandfathers’ swords, and do not fear
To approach the enemy mass.
Thoughts of their wives, dear children and homes incite them to act,
And devoted care of their exhausted fathers.
What madness when surrounded by enemies
To entrust your city’s defence to outside forces
And to confound your civic insignia with foreign hands,
To think Greek weapons insufficient for Greeks!
He, he was the enemy. He subdued the Greeks
That soldier, he tore apart their ruined wealth,
He gave their gods and temples to the wicked fire,
He handed over the Roman empire to the Turks.
It is not so much fate decreed by the gods
As our own guilt that must be atoned for
And the foolish intent of our leader.
And so we wretched men atone and we will always atone
As long as the Black Sea and our tears make us weak.
Translated from Greek by Amy S. Lewis
EXPULSIONS, EXPLORATIONS AND MIGRATIONS
WITH NEW KINGS COME new laws, and 1607 struck the death knell for Gaelic Ireland. In that year, the Earls of Tyrconnel and Tyrone fled to the Continent to seek Spanish aid against their new English overlord, James I. The earls had been stripped of much of their lands under the new freehold system as the Stuart monarchy paved the path for the subsequent Plantation of Ulster. It was, by all accounts, a tragic loss, leaving Ireland rudderless at a critical juncture when the tide against foreign domination might have been turned. Andrias MacMarcuis’s (c.1570–c.1630) lament in his poem “The Flight of the Earls” begins with the memorable line, “Anocht is uaigneach Éire / This night sees Éire desolate”, before ending with the exact moment the Irish lords depart their beloved Ireland with the hope of returning as conquering heroes:
Her chiefs are gone. There’s none to bear
Her cross or lift her from despair;
The grieving lords take ship. With these
Our very souls pass overseas.
Of course, the Stuarts themselves would eventually be supplanted too. Ironically, the fate of the Irish earls would play out again in the shape of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s (1720–88) escape to the Isle of Skye after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
It is to Dante’s first American translator, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), that we owe one of the earliest popular chronicles of one of the first recorded acts of wholesale ethnic expulsion: that of Le Grand Dérangement. Also known as t
he expulsion of the Acadians, the term describes the British decision to deport 15,000 French colonists from their homes in Acadia (the modern Canadian Maritimes) and to ship them back to France, from where they were then resettled in Louisiana, becoming what we now call the Cajuns. Longfellow’s Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847) describes Evangeline Bellefontaine’s efforts to find her beau Gabriel after the expulsion, no mean a task given the circumstances:
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the north-east
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland
Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city,
From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas, —
From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters
Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean
The techniques behind the expulsion of the Acadians would be repeated often in future chapters of American history, including the exile of the pro-British Iroquois to Canada, the Indian Removal of the 1830s and the Long Walk of the Navajo in 1864. Luci Tapahonso’s (1953–) poem “In 1864” records the forced march of the Navajos to Bosque Redondo, where, as the poet notes in her preface, “they were held for four years until the US government declared the assimilation attempt a failure. More than 2,500 died of smallpox and other illnesses, depression, severe weather conditions, and starvation.” As Tapahonso writes: