Sol 6.1

  1. They severed the cord of love, and it was severed.

    And they commanded the entrails to blaze.

  2. They called to one another to scatter the company, and so

    Our tear ducts grew wet with blood at their departure.

  3. Peace upon the one whose lover's heart journeyed

    To him, but did not return sound and unharmed.

  4. A beloved whose embrace the spiteful denied us

    On the evening the tribe departed from Abruq al-Hima.

  5. He unstrings necklaces of pearls as tears and speech,

    And strings them upon himself as jewels and a smile.

  6. He lifted his veil from his sweet, veiled face,

    Then was veiled anew in the brocade of modesty.

  7. His two eyelids spoke to me secretly through tears,

    So the burning thirst of longing nearly found a voice.

  8. A parting from whose cup we drank death unmixed—

    How sweet it would have been, had it been bitter sap and colocynth!

  9. And a delicate woman who praises her figure's beauty

    Whenever it sways with supple grace or stands straight.

  10. She invited me to drink the dawn wine, after

    I had gently pillowed my head on a rose-red forearm, half-asleep.

  11. So I said, 'Pass it round, lawful or forbidden;

    For the forbidden from your hands is not forbidden.'

  12. We drank one night amid kindness and beauty,

    In which we saw kindness and beauty as twins.

  13. And a garden with dewy pearls for jewels: when there smiled

    Toward it the lamps of lightning, it smiled back.

  14. It wafted fragrance beneath the rain, as though

    The rain had come to water it with the choicest pure wine.

  15. And the clouds' downpour drizzled steadily upon it, as though it were

    Abu Ishaq's bounty, pouring down and continuing to drizzle.

  16. A radiant man, whom people deem their age's shining brow,

    When mankind's dark multitude is jet-black.

  17. A generous man: if you asked for the water of his youth,

    A rainstorm would moan with it over you—over you—and rumble.

  18. Whenever his right hand gives a thirst-quenching draught and is kissed,

    You would imagine his right hand al-Hatim and Zamzam.

  19. A lone man charges through him; whenever there turn hostile

    The vicissitudes of the nights, he becomes a vast army.

  20. Whenever his counsels give tyranny a single squeeze,

    Its crookedness is straightened therein, and it shatters.

  21. Do the two fools, who plundered

    The beauties of my poetry, know what plunder they divided?

  22. And what necklaces I waded through seven seas to make,

    Seeking their scattered gems until they were strung together?

  23. I spend the night for it, an ally of sleeplessness when it comes,

    And a foe of slumber until it is sound and whole.

  24. Then it issues from the strainer of thought, as though it

    Were filtering crimson wine, red as dye.

  25. Then, when it became a keen, polished sword and a slender spear

    Of high worth, and a marked steed with a firmly knit back,

  26. And bored pearls, spaced apart, for necks,

    And spread arrow-patterned brocade for shoulders,

  27. Two wolves despoiled it, seeing that it had no

    Trusted brother to protect it from being despoiled.

  28. Two raiders who, if they circled, while

    People were unaware, the Sacred House, would rob it.

  29. Their hands fell short of reaching it

    For a time; but they made brazen falsehood a ladder.

  30. Even if a fortress enclosed it between the two Simak stars,

    And death defended it, it would not escape them.

  31. And if Hell protected it from being wronged,

    They would boldly plunge through Hell to reach it.

  32. They have wronged every graceful, freeborn maiden—

    Words that, if they could speak, would complain of injustice.

  33. Virgins: among them one deeply enamored of her husband,

    Love-stricken, yearning for his wrist as well.

  34. And an abstinent one who, if she sees a suspicious eye

    Watching her, covers her fingers and wrist.

  35. When the new husband claims her, celebrating his wedding,

    The two hold a mourning gathering for the husband left behind.

  36. They were captured and forced to consort with forbidden kin;

    And it grieved them to consort with a forbidden kinsman.

  37. The deluded man did not touch a scorpion's sting;

    Rather, through heedlessness, he touched a mottled snake.

  38. How fitting that a hand whose fingers will not refrain

    From mottled snakes should fall apart, flesh and bones!

  39. A young man's right hand is a limb he holds in honor;

    So do not debase a limb you hold in honor.

  40. Perhaps the king's minister will judge between us,

    And what is obscure among us becomes a clear landmark.

  41. And I truly hope from him for the dawn of a judgment

    That tears apart a dark cloak of doubt.

  42. Whenever I have tested those sound in judgment, I have found them

    Two sorts: one in love with generosity, the other a humbler.

  43. Clouds of kindness when there come the drought's

    Years, and moons when calamity darkens.

  44. And a king's scribes, whose arrows do not miss

    When they nock shafts against a dreadful calamity.

  45. I appealed to Abu Ishaq for justice, as a fair arbiter,

    And many a young man calls on him for bounty, as a benefactor.

  46. And his nature is to hold an oppressor in contempt

    When an oppressed man seeks refuge with him, pleading his grievance.

Sol 6.1