Ah, one of my favorite books of poems (this ed. translated by Cola Franzen). When I was in college, I had checked a book out of the library that had a lot of the poems in Arabic, Spanish, and English. It was fantastic.

Anyway I’m reading this hoping to find something suitable for a wedding, but alas they’re all about battles, or lost loves, or drinking.

Today, I liked this poem:

SPLIT MY HEART

How I wish I could split my heart
with a knife
put you inside
then close up my chest

so that you would be in my heart
and not in another’s
until the resurrection
and the day of judgment.

There you would stay while I lived
and after my death
you would remain buried deep in my heart
in the darkness of the tomb.

-Ibn Hazm (994-1063, Cordoba)

It reminds me of Dead Can Dance’s “I am stretched on your grave”.