1. Your affection in my heart is more delightful than wishes,

    and remembrance of you is sweeter on the palate than honey.

  2. So I have no need for you to reinforce it

    with the offspring borne by the towering palms.

  3. But you reminded me of qualities

    that give the giver merit over the recipient.

  4. Your gifts came to us, for which we found no

    recompense but thanks crowned with praise.

  5. Ruby pendants—you would think their holes were bored

    with a goldsmith's drill, and the pendants strung in a necklace.

  6. And indeed, the produce of bees and palms is one;

    and is there any difference between the shapes of ḥāʾ and khāʾ?

  7. They came in cloaks of reed, as though

    they strutted in striped mantles of fine Egyptian linen.

  8. And the skilled artisan's hand had measured their fitting,

    as David measured the rivets in weaving mail.

  9. They embraced within them like sweethearts embracing;

    so we could take them only with effort.

  10. When fingertips parted them, they clung

    to something like dust in sunlight, for fear of separation.

  11. And another appeared in a glass bottle's shirt,

    as a lamp is filled with the glitter of flame.

  12. They banished its hard heart and lodged in its place

    a tender one, though matching it in color and size.

  13. So, by God, I cannot tell—is that a carving

    of butter, or is this fashioned from butter?

  14. Some of them, above the others, wept at separation,

    blood congealed in the hue of flesh and skin.

  15. And they deepened their coloring with saffron's hue;

    nor is a beauty marred by a cheek's redness.

  16. Are those jars, then, or storehouses of jewels,

    filled with rare gems of rose-colored ambergris?

  17. When hands turn them over in wonder,

    onlookers imagine those hands playing dice.

  18. And a gray-white one, whose color brings frost into view,

    and whose clay is of the substance of hard stone.

  19. With facing sides, its form was

    a model for Dhul-Qarnayn's blocks in the barrier.

  20. Mani's foe in whiteness, as though it

    and the hue of gray hair had remained bound by a pact.

  21. And nothing has perfumed garments like this, preferred

    over musk, camphor, aloeswood, and blended incense.

  22. Favors came from you in swift succession, as though they

    were sparks that hands sent flying from the fire-stick.

  23. And in my inability to give thanks, I ask

    for help from the one who spoke to people in the cradle.

Sol 6.1