Sol 5.6

  1. Is the living anything but one doomed to perish, the child of one who perished?

    Everlastingness belongs in sovereign glory to God alone, without partner.

  2. And if any noble man could endure through all the ages,

    such endurance would belong to a consummate scholar, rare in attainment—

  3. like this man, who now lies with earth for his pillow,

    while, measured against him, the star of the Pleiades lies beneath couches.

  4. Indeed, he was a keen-edged sword in the Sacred Law,

    and a light amid the pitch-black darkness of ignorance.

  5. Whenever he unfolded exacting inquiry in the garden of his teaching,

    what a fragrance arose—a waft of clinging musk!

  6. Whatever recalcitrant matter he summoned in the arena of understanding,

    though it balked at another, came to him without balking.

  7. His propositions, in the solemn work of judgment, were necklaces;

    his fatwas were crowns for the school of Malik.

  8. Whenever Ismail spoke, everyone listened in silence

    to meaning richer than a metal-caster’s craft.

  9. His renown traveled throughout all creation, just as

    the sun travels—yet his renown never sets.

  10. He passed into the Lord’s mercy, full of hope

    for a seat of truth beside the most generous Sovereign.

  11. And when he departed, he made hearts weep in anguish,

    though his was a smiling face, radiant with good cheer.

  12. Grief spread everywhere, until, at the very hour of his burial,

    the rainclouds wept a torrent of cascading tears.

  13. Thus a chronogram-maker was able to say:

    “Heaven’s eye streams over the grave of a master.”

Sol 5.6