The color of my love's hair

From "The Rhumi songs of the lesser known Gertruda Solomon Rosenstein" translated (with some paraphrasing, editing and elucidation) by idyllopus

My love has hair. Brown hair. My love has dun brown hair, which is brown brown.

My love reminds me to speak true, and I see he has brown hair which is not brown brown, for brown is nothing but brown. Brown does not add to itself by being brown again. One brown is the extent of brown, and two browns are a redundancy which does nothing to honor the simplicity of the brown which is the brown of my love's hair.

Then, my love stands in the light and I see he has hair that is light brown, not dark, which is not brown brown, for brown is nothing but brown. Then my love stands in the dark and I see he has brown hair which is brown as brown is when it is in the dark.

What is the color of brown that I may show you how my love's hair is brown, just like that there, but light brown also, like brown hair is when it is in the light.

What is the brown of my love's hair that I may describe it so you may know the brown hair of my love, what the brown of it is like.

I ask, why has not my love black hair, ebon black hair, which I could describe for you as being black as black is, there being nothing less than black which has not become gray, and therefore not black.

"See," my love says, "you are wrong. I have hair of many colors. I am the rainbow."

I ask, why has not my love hair of one color to which I may point on a pie color chart and say, "Here, you may know the hair color of my love by this. This is the color of my love's hair."

To describe my love's hair color is difficult. My love makes it agony to describe his hair color, that he may be the rainbow of all color, not just one or the other, but all.

My love's fingers drip with a veritable rainbow of dyes. A coat of many colors is the hair shirt my lover gives me that I may know him and the length and breadth and depth of him which painfully itches my heart where I can not scratch at the flea which is my love from whose love bite I suffer all the day long, and night too, both, all the day long as in twenty-four hours.

On a white sheet of paper, see, I mix together the colors of the rainbow that I may know the all of the hair color of my love.

It is black.

See, with a color wheel of lights I mix together the colors of the rainbow that I may know the all of the hair color of my love.

It is white.

"See, here is the penguin, King of my love," I say in truth, and though it is so I do not know him thus, though it is so, for which reason I must find him there for I look for my love to find him where he may be as he stays away from me.

Black and white is the color of my love's hair, which from a distance looks gray, which is neither white nor black.

Black and white is the color of my love's hair in which are all colors and so too also the brown color of hair which is the plumage under which I have recognized my love, did first recognize my love, and by which I have vainly tried to describe my love for you, that you may know him when you see him and remember he is mine and stay away from him.

Black and white is the color of my love's hair in which are all colors and so too also the brown color of his lockets for which I await the key which opens them so that as the seas part so too may his hair and I may see his face in the abyss and know that I am never alone.

"Here, climb this," my love says, throwing me a shorn lock of his lovely hair. He is mysterious, truly.

Copyright © 1999 jk

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