Sol 5.6

  1. As for the tale of what you have done—it has now come to light.

    Fire does not gleam until it is kindled.

  2. At the utmost end, is there anything but that in which you saw me?

    And how could there be more in one who has reached the furthest bound?

  3. O his glance, transgressing against me, and my glance—the

    one racing toward him—you both must bear witness.

  4. I see a phantom that visited me while he was absent,

    coming from the unseen, refusing to leave our union a mere abstraction.

  5. Daylight cut me off from what the darkness had joined

    of him—which of the two, then, do you deem the blacker?

  6. If he came by night whenever slumber came knocking,

    I would drink the sleeping-draught out of longing for him.

  7. What an excellent messenger to you, whose coming no one knows,

    so that you might turn it away—or the appointed meeting might claim you.

  8. And a golden wine whose long age has made its vintage venerable,

    that it might establish a covenant of joy renewed.

  9. Its utmost perfection has reached me, yet I see

    no one who can relate how its beginning was.

  10. Long as I kept its company, I indeed saw in it

    qualities that reminded me of Muhammad.

  11. Regale souls with it; yet I see

    that what it binds today, it will undo tomorrow.

  12. And I see Ibn Makki: whenever he gives away wealth,

    the hand of generosity inscribes him as immortal.

  13. In his gladness as he gives, and the tenderness of his face,

    are many exemplars—and the follower is not like the one followed.

  14. Noble deeds must date their age by his name

    and rest upon him, since he has raised them and built them firm.

  15. And it falls to me, concerning him, to erect—by recalling them

    and thus by recalling him—a memorial every day:

  16. and writing, black, in which there are arrows.

    Bounty flows from it, while the arrows fly bearing death—

  17. arrows from a speckled serpent, whose sharp points draw their force

    only from black ink that aspires to lordly eminence.

  18. Those inspirations stirred themselves for him

    with marvels through which that generosity came.

  19. They came, with nothing between strings of gems and them

    except that they are unstrung and strung anew.

  20. How wondrous is what you have done for me, and all the praise I give it!

    As for my own deed, it was only to make you my destination.

  21. By that, I strode through days of calamity,

    for I had seen the murderer deliberately bent on killing.

Sol 5.6