KUSTA BEN LUKA是我的名字，我写信给Abd Al-Rabban;曾经的骗子，现在是哈里发的博学的司库，除了他自己，没有人听他的。带着这封信穿过宝库的大走廊，那里悬挂着哈里发的旗帜，夜色般的色彩，却像夜晚的刺绣一样灿烂，等待着战争的音乐;走过那条小走廊;递给我拜占庭时期用金笔写在紫色污迹上的学术书籍，最后，我想说，在伟大的萨福诗集里;因为如果你把我的信留在那里，一个男孩的爱的、冷漠的手可能会碰到它，让它不知不觉地掉在地板上。在《巴门尼德论》中停下来，把它藏在那里，因为直到世界的尽头，凯斐必须保存这首完美的诗，就像他们保存她的歌一样，它的名声如此之大。当合适的时间过去，羊皮纸将向某个学者揭示一个除了贝都因人之外没有人记载的奥秘。虽然我赞成那些流浪者在他们的帐篷里欢迎伟大的哈伦·拉希德，他忙于波斯使节或希腊战争，必须被忽视，但我不能隐瞒一个事实:在沙漠中游荡，像翅膀下的空气一样毫无特色，却能给鸟儿带来智慧。过些日子，他们会大谈我的事，不过是幻想罢了。 Recall the year When our beloved Caliph put to death His Vizir Jaffer for an unknown reason: 'If but the shirt upon my body knew it I'd tear it off and throw it in the fire.' That speech was all that the town knew, but he Seemed for a while to have grown young again; Seemed so on purpose, muttered Jaffer's friends, That none might know that he was conscience-struck -- But that s a traitor's thought. Enough for me That in the early summer of the year The mightiest of the princes of the world Came to the least considered of his courtiers; Sat down upon the fountain's marble edge, One hand amid the goldfish in the pool; And thereupon a colloquy took place That I commend to all the chroniclers To show how violent great hearts can lose Their bitterness and find the honeycomb. 'I have brought a slender bride into the house; You know the saying, ''Change the bride with spring.'' And she and I, being sunk in happiness, Cannot endure to think you tread these paths, When evening stirs the jasmine bough, and yet Are brideless.' 'I am falling into years.' 'But such as you and I do not seem old Like men who live by habit. Every day I ride with falcon to the river's edge Or carry the ringed mail upon my back, Or court a woman; neither enemy, Game-bird, nor woman does the same thing twice; And so a hunter carries in the eye A mimic of youth. Can poet's thought That springs from body and in body falls Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky, Now bathing lily leaf and fish's scale, Be mimicry?' 'What matter if our souls Are nearer to the surface of the body Than souls that start no game and turn no rhyme! The soul's own youth and not the body's youth Shows through our lineaments. My candle's bright, My lantern is too loyal not to show That it was made in your great father's reign, And yet the jasmine season warms our blood.' 'Great prince, forgive the freedom of my speech: You think that love has seasons, and you think That if the spring bear off what the spring gave The heart need suffer no defeat; but I Who have accepted the Byzantine faith, That seems unnatural to Arabian minds, Think when I choose a bride I choose for ever; And if her eye should not grow bright for mine Or brighten only for some younger eye, My heart could never turn from daily ruin, Nor find a remedy.' 'But what if I Have lit upon a woman who so shares Your thirst for those old crabbed mysteries, So strains to look beyond Our life, an eye That never knew that strain would scarce seem bright, And yet herself can seem youth's very fountain, Being all brimmed with life?' 'Were it but true I would have found the best that life can give, Companionship in those mysterious things That make a man's soul or a woman's soul Itself and not some other soul.' 'That love Must needs be in this life and in what follows Unchanging and at peace, and it is right Every philosopher should praise that love. But I being none can praise its opposite. It makes my passion stronger but to think Like passion stirs the peacock and his mate, The wild stag and the doe; that mouth to mouth Is a man's mockery of the changeless soul.' And thereupon his bounty gave what now Can shake more blossom from autumnal chill Than all my bursting springtime knew. A girl Perched in some window of her mother's housc Had watched my daily passage to and fro; Had heard impossible history of my past; Imagined some impossible history