Sol 6.1

  1. Meeting you, O Lubna, is a phantom;

    for neither of you is anything but a debtor who delays.

  2. Promises, like the wakeful one, are deceptive flashes of lightning;

    and its drowsy guarantors are an imagined mirage.

  3. And I, though my reprovers pull at my reins,

    surely follow my folly and my waywardness for your sake.

  4. And I know that love is a station of obedience

    where every request of longing is answered.

  5. And whoever thinks reproach can capture burning passion

    has led it, unruly, without a hobble.

  6. You are surely the finest physician, if you can

    cure an intractable sickness in the heart.

  7. You prescribed a kiss and an embrace for my illness,

    yet those are lips upon the tips of tall spears.

  8. If a lover has tasted nothing but estrangement,

    how could he know what union tastes like?

  9. Ignorant of beautiful women's ways is one who greets

    them with gray hair and straitened means.

  10. They donned the armor of aversion against us, as though

    we were shooting arrowheads at them from our gray hair.

  11. The nights of youth are days of radiance,

    and a man's gray-haired days are nights.

  12. I wished, though they pass away from one's life,

    that those remaining might stay around me.

  13. And in al-ʿAmiriyya's tents I have a desire:

    she is the watery sheen of a keen blade, newly polished.

  14. I called the full moons and suns their gazelles;

    so do not question their being far beyond reach.

  15. They peered from the black tents, as though

    eggs peered out amid the down of ostrich chicks.

  16. What need has the jealous man among them for spears,

    when the poles of curtained chambers already keep others away from them?

  17. Just as Ibn Marwan's own spirit has guarded his glory

    with white resolve or red wealth.

  18. Radiant in every part of his face, his cheer is mingled

    with the wine of bounty, containing the water of beauty.

  19. A kinsman of noble heights, no need drives him

    to a paternal uncle's fame or a maternal uncle's renown.

  20. When a man one day boasts of his mantle,

    his garments are nothing but noble qualities:

  21. youthful resolve and mature insight,

    inviolable honor and bounty free to plunder.

  22. Virtues whose necklace, were they strung, would spare

    beautiful women's necks the need for necklaces of pearls.

  23. Whenever they contended with him for glory, he won it

    with hands reaching far toward the attainment of eminence.

  24. The grazing herds of his favors among people feed

    on blossoms of gratitude in meadows of noble deeds.

  25. And from his love of kindness, he gives his reins

    to a reproachful request or a coquettish plea.

  26. Thus the clouds' rain waters every land,

    with a south wind at one time and a north wind at another.

  27. May you delight in favors whose fulfillment you have guaranteed

    on generosity's behalf, till it passed the night at ease,

  28. and in how, through the bounty you have spread,

    you have won from free men the servitude of bondsmen.

  29. God bless the keen edge of your tongue! It is

    truly a fine match for an adversary on a day of debate.

  30. And by God, what your fingertips clasp is indeed

    a lance for thrusting, or a vicious rod of wild lote wood.

  31. For seekers of bounty, your courtyard is a husband to widows,

    and for night travelers, your fire is a mother to children.

  32. I have known you to meet each man according to his worth,

    and not all men's treasures are valuable.

  33. Then why, in the scales of your justice, does my pan

    fall short when you weigh it against an equal,

  34. while wretches outweigh me, their foreheads like

    sandals, once you have adorned them with thongs?

  35. My share of wealth is what sustains young locusts,

    and my portion of fires is a wick's portion.

  36. But for you, Laṭābā would not have been my stopping place,

    nor the land of Bājisrā the resting place of my saddlebags.

  37. I dwell there like a sword forced into its sheath,

    though it had hoped to quench its thirst on a day of combat.

  38. And if its two edges were freed and it were drawn among throats,

    it would hew them in a striker's right hand and left.

  39. And what use is a finely built steed's speed

    when it is confined within a narrow course?

  40. I see every man of hateful character joining

    the short cords of his incapacity to my cords.

  41. Effigies like cattle: the hills have sprouted grass

    for them, and so they go grazing and charging.

  42. And an age that has brought my company together with theirs

    is like night, a passage for a lion and ants.

  43. You will know which of us, when the course grows long

    for him, complains of sore feet and fatigue.

  44. And there you will distinguish between me and them:

    how can mature camels be equated with weanlings?

  45. I would not have accepted their dwellings becoming

    my dwellings, nor those saddlebags mine.

  46. But I ride whatever I am leading,

    even the back of a sluggish camel with a damaged hump.

  47. Saltwort may be grazed while sweet pasture lies upon the earth,

    and water is drunk though it is not clear and sweet.

  48. And one dwells unseen in the earth's lowlands,

    while ibexes rise upon mountain peaks.

  49. It is nothing but the fault of a hostile age,

    which deems the recovery of people of merit unlawful.

  50. And oh, sometimes it grants wishes to one in despair;

    for a barren female may conceive after barrenness.

Sol 6.1