Honey River

From The New Yorker, September 5, 1988.

Honey River
by Ben Ani Ruh of Algeciras
Arabo-Analdusian poems, ninth-thirteenth centuries

Next time you're passing Honey River stop
And ask about the night I spent there once
Till break of day, confounding the police
And drinking wine, from mouth to mouth it flowed
And cutting roses (as we say)

As branches interlace across a stream
So we embraced and drank fresh cups of wine,
Our intertwining limbs, ask too of them
And what it meant the cool word aquilon
Upon that flowery riverbank

Where neither fire burned nor brazier stood
Yet what aromas all the flowers dispensed
Of aloe, and ask about the candle flames
Aflicker in the river like the tips of swords
For so we loved without

Pause through the honey night until the cold
Necklaces we wore drove us at last apart
And all
I knew of melancholy or would ever know
Called in the last dawn song of a nightingale