Sol 5.6

  1. Distance is the clipping of pinion-feathers;

    otherwise I would have been first to arrive with the departing caravan.

  2. But how could one whom meeting you has left cast down,

    the marks upon him now as conspicuous as landmarks?

  3. Ask his night—and his day—about his sorrow:

    both have taken pity on his ceaseless grief.

  4. Together they told him the bounds of his reach toward glory;

    together they fettered him from attaining noble deeds.

  5. Behold him among the boughs of sorrow’s great tree,

    trading laments with the doves in the hours before dawn.

  6. Who will carry from him a greeting to al-ʿAqīq,

    as flowers in their calyxes breathe fragrance after rain?

  7. Though al-Ghawr’s bān trees have grown distant from him, he has

    no ally but the outpouring of streaming tears.

  8. O great tree of the valley, when will reunion be granted

    by nights that deem separation an inescapable blow?

  9. And when the caravan’s cameleer sang out at Yathrib,

    and they urged the trail-marking, sturdy she-camels on their way,

  10. my weakness left me behind, and my tears spilled over;

    in fancy I kissed the dust beneath the camels’ feet.

  11. Do you think the days will reunite my scattered self with theirs,

    so that, for the yearning lover, the truth of resolve comes true,

  12. and moons rise under a happier ascendant?

    O Time, if at first you scattered my union,

  13. perhaps, when you decree, the final outcome will prosper.

Sol 5.6