Preface
Introduction
An Andalusian Chronology
On Fleeing His City
The Miracle at Sea
A Curse
The Apple
Jasmine
The Gazelle
The Fawn
Where's That Coy Gazelle
In Fact I Love That Fawn
I'll Show You a Fawn
They Stole My Sleep
His Brother's Illness
On the Death of Isaac, His Brother
The Friends
The House of Prayer
The Critique
The Pain
What Are These
A Day of Distress
The Victory Over Seville
The Dream
The War with Yadir
On Lifting the Siege
Your Manuscript Shines
To Yehosef, His Son
Pass of Sand
Among My Friends
Rise Early
Your Years Are Sleep
Sad Friend
How I Helped the Wise
Rouge in Appearance
Take the Crystal
Truth Is Hard
When the Lord Is with You
One Who Works and Buys Himself Books
How Could You Loathe
Forgive the Man Who Sinned Against You
If You're Finding the Good at Fault
Delay Your Speech
I'd Suck Bitter Poison from the Viper's Mouth
If You Don't Have the Power to Pay
He Who Lingers at the Court of the King
In Business Don't Get Involved
If You Shame a Man
People Welcome the Rich
He Whose Heart in His Heart
If You Leave a Long-Loved Friend
Respect and Discretion
The Rich Are Small
You Who'd Be Wise
When You're Desperate
It's Heart that Discerns
Stab Your Heart
Is There Any Frustration
Did Your Father Leave You Glory
Could Kings Right a People Gone Bad
The King
He'll Bring You Trouble
The Wise Understand
Assistants Come to Judgment in Groups
The Good Students Tend
What's Familiar Is Sometimes Distanced
The Heart Holds Hidden Knowledge
First War
Soar, Don't Settle
Commerce Has Markets
Three Things
The Foolish Enemy's Face Tells All
Man's Wisdom Is in What He Writes
Gazing Through the Night
Lovers of Life
The Multiple Troubles of Man
Be Glad, She Said
Earth to Man
Your Loved Ones Depress You
Soul Opens Inside You
The Child at One or Two
Fear Five to the Power of Five
I Quartered the Troops for the Night
Why Repeat the Sins
Time Defies and Betrays the Patricians
You Felt the Fear of Death
Why Should the Hearts of You Purists
Luxuries Ease
You're Trapped, My Tongue
Friends, a Fence Surrounds Us
Youth Brings Us
He Who Depends on the Princes
On Their Couches Stretched Out at the Treasury
Come Up and See the Court
Suffer the World
The Market
Flutter or Rest
See the Fraud Flow By
The Earthquake
Two Eclipses
The Tyrant Who Rules the Homeless and Poor
My Spirit
The Black of My Hair
Ask the Dead and They'll Tell You
Send the Lord to the People
Cast Your Bread
Know of the Limbs
You Mock Me Now in Your Youth
You Think There's No Hell That Will Hold You
You Look Through Open Eyes
Everything Hidden
Notes
Bibliography

The first major poet of the Hebrew literary renaissance of Moslem Spain, Shmuel Ben Yosef Ha-Levi HaNagid (993-1056 c.e.) was also the Prime Minister of the Muslim state of Granada, battlefield commander of the non-Jewish Granadan army, and one of the leading religious figures in a medieval Jewish world that stretched from Andalusia to Baghdad. Peter Cole's groundbreaking versions of HaNagid's poems capture the poet's combination of secular and religious passion, as well as his inspired linking of Hebrew and Arabic poetic practice. This annotated Selected Poems is the most comprehensive collection of HaNagid's work published to date in English.
"The Multiple Troubles of Man"
The multiple troubles of man,
my brother, like slander and pain,
amaze you? Consider the heart
which holds them all
in strangeness, and doesn't break.
"I'd Suck Bitter Poison from the Viper's Mouth"
I'd suck bitter poison from the viper's mouth
and live by the basilisk's hole forever,
rather than suffer through evenings with boors,
fighting for crumbs from their table.

Peter Cole is the author of Rift, a collection of poems.