Sol 5.6

  1. Tell So-and-so al-Dīn how I reproach him:

    he has persisted far too long in cold estrangement.

  2. Toward him I was pure in conscience and conviction,

    yet he repaid me with adulterated friendship, devoid of purity.

  3. My heart sought fidelity from him—

    but what friend endures as a brother true?

  4. My soul’s healing would have been to see him

    pay a visit; yet that cure proved beyond my reach.

  5. Had some grave calamity befallen So-and-so,

    I would have sufficed him against whatever befell.

  6. I would have beaten back what assailed him, its blade blunted,

    until their fire was extinguished.

  7. I speak well of him and come to his defense,

    and guard his honor when he is absent and unseen.

  8. I reproach, then excuse, the lover in him,

    distracted by his sons and his riches.

  9. Time and again he offers me an excuse

    more tenuous than a floating mote or blown dust.

  10. Yet if someone else invited him for some affair,

    he would hasten there with ceremony and warm welcome.

  11. The soul inclines toward wherever it finds

    its own desire—there is no hiding that.

  12. For the needs of others he shows concern,

    but at my need you see him shrink away.

  13. I have shaken my hands clean of all companions;

    may ceaseless rains of oblivion erase their tracks.

  14. Though morning found me choosing among them,

    by evening I had become one who cast them off.

  15. I thought them cream; they proved instead

    mere vanishing foam, swept away like scum.

  16. Can the generous deeds of one like me go to waste,

    and can a chosen friend turn away from one like me?

  17. Expect no fidelity from an Egyptian:

    they were created without the wāw in wafāʾ—“fidelity.”

Sol 5.6