Sol 5.6

  1. If someday you wish to become master of a clan,

    then rule through forbearance, not through rashness and abuse.

  2. For forbearance—know this—is better in its ultimate outcome

    than folly, unless you catch a scent of injustice.

  3. One who awaited me expecting a hulking man said, “I found him

    slender; yet he did the work of the great, solidly built man.”

  4. I have seen men of middling stature, each a pillar of his house,

    lofty in worth—for camel-height is no greatness of frame.

  5. My two friends, the dwellings bring the lover’s sickness back,

    as a fevered man relapses, or one who bears a wound.

  6. Halt, both of you, and ask after the tribe’s abode, now a blackened ruin;

    and at al-Abraq, open to view, pause awhile over a vestige.

  7. A dwelling at al-Burq could do nothing but stir me,

    and so did an abode of hers between al-Ajāriʿ and al-Rasm.

Sol 5.6