Sol 5.6

  1. Now, in keeping with the generosity of a noble daughter,

    you must surely submit in this to my judgment.

  2. Your resolve comes bent on breaking with me,

    yet you undo it and strengthen my resolve.

  3. You spend the night guarding for her what I freely gave

    of my lifeblood, yet you make free what you guard.

  4. And morning brings reconciliation; otherwise, if

    I were punished, I would for once know my crime.

  5. O you who shot and set me up as a target,

    do not reproach me for shooting back.

  6. Indeed, I have excused you when you wrong me,

    because I have tasted the sweetness of injustice.

  7. When I saw that calamities had left

    their mark upon the courtyards, like an inscription,

  8. and knew that all the people

    knew everything those calamities had wrought,

  9. I did not renew my complaint, since they already knew—

    lest I prove the least understanding among them.

  10. So I stood recalling every noble deed

    that had outstripped every rain-pouring cloud,

  11. and one remnant of those graces, still flowing,

    like a star borne by Abū al-Najm.

  12. Were the people’s refuge not in his hand,

    calamities would have run their accustomed course against it.

  13. Would that they had! Yet even had they done so,

    peace remaining sound would not have held them back.

  14. And a hollow-flanked steed, wolf-like, whose four legs

    charge against enemies and against want.

  15. When you mounted it, you made its back

    a judgment-seat among the horsemen,

  16. in a stand where judgment favors its ignorant man,

    O Badr, against men endowed with prudence,

  17. with bias against the offender—how astonishing

    that blows should follow the adversary’s argument!

  18. In your eyes there is no prudence whenever men grow stingy

    and give stinginess the name of prudence.

  19. And noble qualities whose renown has reached

    the farthest seas of prose and verse.

  20. You have come to conceal them—but how can you,

    when the embroidery of your glory shows among the patterns?

  21. A pressing crisis is turned aside by you, just as

    a noble camel is turned by the ring through its pierced nose.

Sol 5.6