Sol 5.6

  1. Suppose my imprisonment keeps me from union with him—

    then why, too, does his phantom withhold itself?

  2. True, my eye has not slept, that his phantom might visit by night;

    the loss of my sleep is the cause of its disappearance.

  3. This, then, is the lover: one who does not forget him amid affliction,

    though whoever is in such a state forgets his own name.

  4. He has made my prison a portion of his turning away,

    and my long anguish a branch of his weariness.

  5. He did not adulterate honey with poison for its taster

    until his desertion appeared to me within his coy disdain.

  6. Never have my eyes seen two jealous rivals so unlike

    over him as my heart and the dust beneath his sandals.

  7. Indeed, I conceal him warily; for

    a wound’s treacherous attack is feared just as it heals.

  8. Nor is it my purpose to declare his name openly;

    the description of his beauty is disclosure enough.

  9. Ah, may my father ransom that fresh, verdant bough! Yet

    I used it only as a kenning for his stature and symmetry.

  10. Though the beloved’s beauty surpasses that bough,

    it is the nearest existing likeness of what I mean.

  11. The beauty of this poetry comes only from a breath

    of his within my mouth, before union with him was severed.

  12. It then spoke magic—except that

    its magic was of a kind whose lawfulness none disputed.

  13. So too did Ibn Sirin, through a breath from Joseph,

    speak of dreams in words like his.

  14. I follow his example through a breath from his dream;

    what excuse, then, has a waking man when emulating him?

  15. Come, turn your whole gaze toward your two sidelocks,

    and let his glance dispense with its arrowheads.

  16. There you see two letter nūns: one you left undotted,

    and another dotted with the point of his beauty mark.

  17. The scribe of the right-hand one erased the darkness of the dot

    above the nūn on the left, with consummate artifice,

  18. when you adorned the nūn on his right with a dot

    and left the nūn upon his left undotted.

  19. O my lords, a servant whose hope rests upon you, relying

    upon you—and no one but you crosses his mind.

  20. Can a man at the bottom of an abyss seek aid

    to be drawn out except by the strongest of his ropes?

  21. Have you seen him seek any intercessor but you?

    How much uglier that would be, while he is in such distress!

  22. It was nothing but the auspicious omen of Saʿd and Aḥmad;

    when petitioners invoke their names, most fortunate is his omen.

  23. And now that Saʿd and his son have become his stronghold,

    what excuse remains for not freeing him from his fetters?

  24. O sudden verse, like a dark raincloud, seek indulgence

    from thought for what it granted you when weary.

  25. Though you have become the utmost my mind could labor forth with a spark,

    how often, in praising you, has it surpassed that in improvisation!

Sol 5.6