Sol 5.6

  1. I was alone with a Baghdadi belle who stole my sleep.

    I said to her, as she resolved to leave me:

  2. “I see the belles of Egypt stay with me

    and never desert me in my days of plenty;

  3. yet if I go broke, they will not enter my house.

    Is this the way—the way of Egypt’s girls?”

  4. She said, “Then tell me: what is your way,

    and that of Jilliq’s girls, O man of Maʿarra?

  5. Do you pay for her entire night, so she will come

    to hear one verse of poetry from Your Eminence?

  6. By God, even if you were Khosrow’s son,

    she would never come to you without a dower.”

  7. I said, “Indeed”—and between my lips

    and my beloved’s, a qirat of pure gold made peace.

Sol 5.6