Past Gasps

It’s a shame that not every nation has a genre of food poetry. Some cultures don’t consider food a sufficiently dignified subject; others just don’t have cuisines that lend themselves to poetizing. A nomad meal of big scorched lumps of meat may not inspire sensitive souls to reach for the old rhyming dictionary.

Medieval Arab literature did have such a genre, though, and some of the poems are pretty good. The following are by the 9th century Baghdad poet Ibn al-Rumi. The first describes a skilled maker of flat breads:

As long as I live, I’ll never forget a baker I once passed

Who could roll out flat breads in the twinkling of an eye.

Between seeing the dough as a lump in his hand

And seeing it as a disk like the full moon,

It took no longer than for ripples to spread

In water where a stone has been tossed.

The poets had a taste for drop-dead extravagant imagery that would make their readers gasp. In the next poem, Ibn al-Rumi is describing the 9th century’s favorite pastry, lauzinaj. It was filled with ground almonds, hence the reference to a sweetheart’s “white mouth” (white teeth were a mark of beauty).

The filling is dense, the crust more delicate than the eastern breeze,

Like robes tailored of the finest syrup,

A skin so delicate you would think it shared the wings of grasshoppers.

If a mouth were fashioned of this pastry, it would be the white, sweet-smelling mouth

Of every fair maid for whom a young man wished to make the palm of his hand a sailing boat.

(Gasp.)