Sol 5.6

  1. I say to my companion, foster-brother of my cup,

    my comrade in debauchery and wickedness:

  2. Why have you turned away from the wine cup?

    You have squandered the hours of joy.

  3. Only after your hair turned gray—damn you—did you repent of it?

    You have no excuse for your repentance.

  4. How could you turn aside from evil ways

    by which you come to a wretched end?

  5. Through them I clothed you and myself in infamy,

    and so I trail the robe of a proud, vainglorious man.

  6. Have you forgotten how we spent an age

    in which the days smiled with bright teeth?

  7. Whenever we passed the night drunk,

    we went forth senseless with wine;

  8. then we arose and drank again at morning,

    unable to tell evening from dawn.

  9. And you, among whores and adulteresses,

    would joust with them using your short spear.

  10. You used to tell me, “Drink with pleasure,

    and take it from the great and the small.”

  11. Whenever you caught sight of one, even an old woman,

    you drew as a donkey’s member is drawn.

  12. And out of folly you inclined toward beauties

    and preferred females over males.

  13. You abandoned my way and fled from me

    as a dog flees a mighty lion.

  14. Your repentance, which was hypocrisy,

    is delusion, as is your immersion in delusion.

  15. Like dye upon gray hair, it fades after a day,

    and its span before reappearing is not long.

  16. Nor was it written that it should cross my mind,

    nor—by your gray hair—did it stir within the conscience.

  17. If they exacted covenants from you concerning it

    through the lines your own hands wrote,

  18. then turn away from it, back to what you once were in,

    like one who smells a fart after perfume.

  19. Commit as many sins as you can,

    for God forgives a great many.

  20. And let us enjoy the fair ones in ease and comfort,

    all our days, to bass string and treble.

  21. For if revelry is present while you are absent,

    and you are not numbered among those attending,

  22. I shall blacken pages with satire against you;

    today I am more scathing than Jarīr.

  23. Obey my counsel and accept my judgment,

    by the right the one who seeks counsel owes his counselor,

  24. so that you may spend your life in rapture and diversion;

    for our return is to a forgiving Lord.

  25. Spend whatever you possess and pay it no mind,

    for our Nāṣir is riches to the poor.

  26. Through his bounty and the largesse of his hands, we are

    like one who has taken refuge in a flourishing garden.

  27. We have never ceased coming to his watering place,

    as thirst-maddened camels come to sweet, abundant water.

Sol 5.6