The Blood Moon from a 19th-century Thai manuscript, MS15760 at the British Library. Source: blogs.bl.uk
It is said that Qasmuna’s father, Ismail, enjoyed improvising verse with her. One day he said: ‘Finish this poem’.
I had a friend whose rare delight,
Though it rewarded care with spite,
Itself exonerated.
Qasmuna thought for a moment and replied:
So the sun, to which for all its light
The moon is obliged, is still by it
Obliterated.
One day she looked in the mirror, and considered that she was beautiful and had not married. She said:
There I see a garden ripe
For reaping, but not one
Palm spread for picking.
With what pains tender
Days are wasted. Only
The unnamable remains.
Her father heard this, and began to think of her marriage. On seeing a passing doe, she said:
Doe, forever grazing
On meadows, we are sisters
In wildness, in the contrast
Between eye-white and iris.
Alone, companionless,
We bear the fate
Set down for us.
тнє ѕυℓтαη'ѕ ѕєαℓ 