Requiem

remember the story of El Cid Campeador in Spain, he also loved a woman called Ximena. And when he was mortally wounded he told her to tie his dead body to his horse and send him back into battle, so the enemy would see he was still alive. Then tie my body to a bloody rickshaw or whatever damn mode of transport you can find, camel-cart, donkey-cart, bullock-cart bike, but for godsake not a bloody elephant; okay? Because the enemy is close and in this sad story Ximena is the Cid.

— Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

***

Give each man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

— Polonius, Hamlet I.iii.69-81

***

My language,
I'd ask of you
in my life
to lift up a sound
of lament

— Samuel ibn Nagrila, trans. Peter Cole

***

Que a mi me vengan a decir la verdad
No aguanto ya más mentiras
Disfruto bien de la vida
Aunque tomando medidas — ¡azúcar!

— Celia Cruz, "La negra tiene tumbao"