Sol 5.6

  1. I crept forward on both hands, touching him,

    with the stealthy tread of one stealing close to overhear secrets.

  2. Then my pen began to glide, drawing long strokes across his paper,

    while night cast curtains over the horizons.

  3. Then he spoke when drowsiness cleared from his eye,

    after seeing a waistband drawstring threaded through, and buttons:

  4. “O sleeper through the night, delighted by its beginning,

    calamities may come knocking before dawn.

  5. Do not rejoice in a night whose beginning is pleasant,

    for many a night’s end has kindled the fire.

  6. Destroyed are the generations that once lived in ease

    by the ceaseless return of the two ever-new ones—day and night—as they come and go.

  7. How many a king have the vicissitudes of time destroyed,

    though in his day he could bestow both benefit and harm.

  8. O you who embrace a world that cannot last,

    passing evening and morning in it, continually journeying—

  9. why not abandon your embrace of this world,

    so that in Firdaws you may embrace virgin maidens?

  10. If you seek the eternal Gardens to dwell in,

    then you must not feel safe from the Fire.”

Sol 5.6