Sol 5.6

  1. The departing company resolved upon separation and journeyed forth in search of pasture;

    on the day of farewell, they did not come, nor did they graze.

  2. God knows that, because of their departure,

    on the day of parting the very core of my heart nearly split.

  3. One day I marveled at my little children and their mother,

    Umm Dulāma, when anguish stirred her.

  4. May God not bless her as an awakener!

    She sprang up to scold my family after they had fallen asleep.

  5. We are all alike in complexion, our faces

    black and ugly, and even our names are hideous.

  6. Hunger has wasted you away since our family's support fell

    upon the caliph—from him come drink and satiety.

  7. No—by Him who, Commander of the Faithful, decreed

    the caliphate for you, with all its paths to exaltation,

  8. I have never ceased devoting my earnings entirely to her, and she eats them

    to the exclusion of me and my children, then lies down—

  9. an ugly, loathsome woman, with a great paunch in her belly

    and crookedness in the joints of her limbs.

  10. I reminded her, by the Book of God, of our sacred bond,

    but she would take no profit from the Book of God.

  11. So she bristled haughtily, then said in anger,

    “Are you the one reciting the Book of God, you base wretch?

  12. Go out and seek us wealth and a farm,

    just as our neighbors have wealth and cultivated land.

  13. And deceive our caliph out of it with a request—

    the caliph is indeed taken in by requests.”

Sol 5.6