Sol 5.6

  1. May God preserve the days of joy at Ḥājir,

    and the season of my passionate yearning there, and my love—

  2. where love’s fruits were sweet to gather in his nearness,

    and I had known no reproach from any fair-minded man.

  3. An hour brought us together for delight

    and, through intoxication, made every forbidden thing lawful to us.

  4. Life is nothing but a cup of thirst-quenching wine,

    passed around—but in the palms of a youth.

  5. Whenever I sought union from him, his desire

    for union was the utmost of my longing and aim.

  6. And if my thirst alarmed him, he quenched it;

    how often he quenched, on many a day, my burning thirst and craving!

  7. I drank the heady wine of his cup and his saliva,

    and each of them, O Ṣulḥ, was a cup of vintage wine.

  8. And verse he sang there delighted my hearing,

    to the seekers’ melody, with the warbling of a dove.

Sol 5.6