tarbaby

for journal poetry day:

Song of the Beloved

Hark! My beloved! Here he comes,
bounding over the mountains, leaping over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young wild goat:
there he stands outside our wall,
looking in at the windows, peering through the lattice.


My beloved spoke, he said to me:
Rise up my true love, my fairest come away.
For now winter is past and the rains are over and gone;
the flowers appear in the country side;
the time is coming when the birds will sing,
and the turtle-doves cooing will be heard in the land;
when the green figs will ripen on the fig-trees
and the vines give forth their fruit and fragrance.
Rise up my true love, my fairest come away.


My beloved is mine and I am his; he delights in the lillies.
When the day is cool and the shadows fade to darkness
turn, my beloved and show yourself a gazelle
or a young wild goat
on the hills where the cinnamon grows.


Night after night on my bed I have sought my true love;
have sought him but not found him,
I have called him but he has not answered.
I said I will rise and go the rounds of the city,
through the streets and the squares, seeking my true love.
I sought him but I did not find him,
I called him but he did not answer.
The watchmen patrolling the city met me, and I asked
Have you seen my true love?
Scarcely had I left them when I met my true love.
I hugged him and would not let him go
until I had brought him to my mothers house,
to the room where I was conceived.


Epilogue
The fountain in my garden is a spring of living water,
flowing down from Lebanon.
Awake, north wind, and come, south wind;
blow upon my garden that its perfumes may pour forth,
that my beloved may come to his garden
and enjoy its rare fruits.