Sol 5.6

  1. Is it in their dwelling, after they journeyed away, that you weep—

    and lament? Yet you complain to no one who can redress your grief.

  2. O abandoned campsite of the tribe who loaded up and departed

    from the valley of ghada trees—what has befallen us because of you?

  3. You lie hushed: no beholder’s eye can see you,

    effaced, nor does any voice bring us news of you.

  4. You reminded me—while gray hair laughs, baring its teeth—

    of our locks in the days of youth and reckless daring:

  5. nights when even the forbearing and wise showed no restraint,

    and no devotion could be found in them even among the devout.

  6. By God, what mouths once met our noses

    with fragrance sweeter than musk’s redolence, though they had forsaken musk!

  7. How many a sick soul whose cure we had ceased to hope for

    lay in your sandy tracts—or a captive with no release!

  8. So tell those whom I left—not out of contempt for them:

    my holding back made them bold, and my departure raised their hopes.

  9. How many a time I assayed you and tested your true nature:

    my assay declared you base coin, my smelting exposed you as false.

  10. May those among whom I dwelt only yesterday never be far removed,

    upon the hill of al-Bani, at the very summit of loftiness.

  11. Through them I attained what the hand of wishes could never reach,

    and held sway until I came to pass judgment on the king himself.

  12. I dwelt beside them—proud men of noble bearing; whenever

    I strove stubbornly with them, they matched me in stubborn contention.

  13. Noble men—their riches were not kept to swell their own abundance,

    nor was a single dirham withheld through meanness or hoarding.

  14. And courtyards where humiliation was unknown among them,

    where poverty was not feared, nor life lived in straitness.

  15. It was they who brought me out of the straits of displeasure into favor,

    and they who gave my heart certainty in place of doubt.

  16. They kept me above abasing myself for anything coveted,

    and preserved the water of my face—my honor—from being spilled.

  17. They made me master after I had been merely a sojourner

    for an age, and bore my star above the firmament.

  18. They and I were bound in intimacy and neighborly closeness,

    like the ordered beads of a necklace along the course of its thread.

  19. They departed: I have no substitute, no recompense for them.

    And here I am, weeping all my life over their loss.

Sol 5.6