Sol 5.6

  1. O master to whom all masters submit,

    Whose noble deeds follow one another in unbroken succession,

  2. Whose favors toward me continue without cease, until I have

    Gifts from him, with yet more gifts behind them.

  3. Indeed, his favors have turned Time and its calamities away from me,

    After I had dreaded its morning assaults.

  4. They gave me victory over an age whose tyranny had afflicted me,

    And through me my days gained mastery over the days of Time.

  5. With him my hopes found their very life,

    While to the envier, the favors of his hands are death.

  6. You have bestowed upon me favors, glorious and exalted,

    Beyond all that descriptions can encompass.

  7. When they are scattered through a panegyrist’s speech,

    All praise and eulogy from me become silence.

  8. We are incapable of praising you as you deserve,

    And God knows what intentions hearts conceal.

  9. O glorious one whose creed is the doing of praiseworthy deeds,

    Whose generosity is to him as fasting and prayer:

  10. He spends the night interceding, hopeful of a voluntary gift

    From him, while slumber has covered every eye.

  11. Generosity is like his standing and prostration

    When they are compared; and glorifying God is his constant habit.

  12. He is never found except giving freely or promising

    A promise so great that the available hours fall short of fulfilling it.

  13. His right hand assures success to those who seek his bounty,

    Steadfast through the pitch-black night of their doubts.

  14. Possessor of an aspiration so lofty that it rises above

    Gemini, while lesser aspirations fall beneath it.

  15. It lies beyond imagination, yet truly it

    Draws near whenever people’s needs are entrusted to it.

  16. And a resolve like a guarded, keen-edged sword,

    Protected lest Time blunt its cutting edge.

  17. Whenever a grave and mighty ordeal assails,

    He leaves the enemy and all their host scattered.

  18. Abu al-Husayn possesses such generosity that, were it

    The raincloud’s, no desert beneath it would go barren.

  19. His glorious endeavors are as countless as pebbles;

    Among Tayy, one deed of his ranks among its greatest.

  20. His marks upon the lands are like the raincloud’s life-giving rain,

    And on the seeker of his bounty its marks are plain.

  21. By his gifts he revives souls, just as

    Vegetation is revived by the bounty of pouring clouds.

  22. Abu al-Husayn raised glory high and inherited it

    From noble lords who built its edifices.

  23. A forerunner toward goals before which others fall short,

    When the rival racecourses are stretched out.

  24. When they strive toward glory and he too strives for it,

    He goes unhurried, yet the victor’s reeds are awarded him.

  25. Ever poised when generosity calls; and if you compare

    Anyone with him in forbearance, you would call the other a pebble.

  26. A mountain in whom Time itself seeks refuge, and with him

    Lies a remedy for every vicissitude of Time.

  27. In his right hand is a pen which, whenever he brandishes it

    In the faces of the days, you would call a spear.

  28. In its nib is the might of a spearhead and the awe

    Of the keen-edged sword—though an inkwell contains it.

  29. Sahban would be tongue-tied before him, as inarticulate as Baqil;

    Swift to private counsel, yet possessed of deliberation;

  30. Drowsy, yet nonetheless alert—

    In him both pride and humility remain awake.

  31. His ink never writes amid the darkness of night

    But through it the darkness is dispelled.

  32. And Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad—

    Before him hostile allegations against me have been embellished.

  33. So the accustomed favors of his grace have been withheld from me,

    While slanderers and enemies have striven between us.

  34. So turn him from prolonged estrangement and stir him,

    For noble action always stirs him.

  35. By God, praise and its bestowal are not my concern

    For just any man whose right hand is hoped to breathe forth gifts,

  36. Except as recompense to one whose favor has become mine—

    A favor that compels and binds me.

  37. Al-Misma‘i has rendered me good offices,

    Whose delightful days seem mere hours.

  38. I imagine them the age of youth and all its beauty,

    When pleasures were sweet to me beneath its shade.

  39. Take it this morning, Abu al-Husayn—a poem

    In which I have brought together the rāʾs and kāfs.

  40. One trait of its sister-poems has been made absent from it:

    When it is recited, it has no sisters.

  41. And had those sisters indeed been present, there would have been—

    Paired with it—the ghayns and alifs.

  42. So delight Abu Abdullah with it when

    The reciter of its verses is afflicted by a lisp.

  43. Its deficiency made it perfect to the ear, and excluded

    From it those things that would be blemishes within it.

  44. I purified it for him like wine, so that

    In it, to a discerning ear, there is no speck.

  45. A beloved who captivates minds with her beauty,

    A ruby in softness, though a solid rock;

  46. Alid, Husayni, proudly resplendent—

    Throats are adorned by the beauty of reciting it.

  47. Its meter, by al-Khalil’s standard, is perfectly balanced:

    mutafāʿilun, mutafāʿilun, faʿilāt.

  48. Had Wasil ibn Ata been its craftsman,

    When recited it would be taken for sacred verses.

  49. Were it not for my avoiding the chance that he might tire of hearing it,

    I would have lengthened it as far as the tāʾs could trace.

Sol 5.6