Sol 5.6

  1. Here is my hand: indeed, the stars pay no blood-price.

    So will you take heed, if you are one of those rightly guided?

  2. How much innocent blood, shed with impunity,

    has been spilled by the eye of a deliberate killer!

  3. Turn aside from union with Salmā in love;

    you will be safe. Shun Suʿdā’s encampment, and prosper.

  4. Call her forth from the hand of one slender-waisted, honey—

    —sweet and dusky-lipped, delicate-mouthed and languid;

  5. twilight-red of cheek, dawn-white of

    teeth, night-black of beauty mark.

  6. He assails his lovers—with his figure,

    and with his glances—with a straightened lance and an Indian blade.

  7. His cheeks said to the fire of my longing:

    “You have me for your model: do not die—blaze on!”

  8. A red wine—ancient was her vintner, primordial his age;

    she has endured throughout everlasting time.

  9. She is pure essence: in her all thought comes to rest,

    and from her, when you contemplate her, thought begins.

  10. She spread coal-black fruit upon emerald boughs

    and wove herself curtains of chrysolite over them.

  11. She lingered a maiden in her bower; when she was unveiled,

    the eye’s glances beheld, from her there in the hand,

  12. her ruby set within a pearl,

    inlaid with a clustered, ordered array of pearls.

  13. Wine that carries the spirit away, enraptured by her—

    away in ecstasy—and makes every grief-stricken spirit vanish.

  14. At evening her cupbearer circles round with something solid

    of silver, and something molten of gold.

Sol 5.6