Sol 6.1

  1. The lightning's sleeplessness is a trait of the love-tormented;

    and, fearing the talebearers, it gnashes its teeth.

  2. They knew the outward cheerfulness and joy,

    but did not know what it concealed.

  3. For the rain is its tears, pouring down in longing,

    and the radiance is its fire, rising in sorrow.

  4. They reproached me for my longing for every beauty mark,

    and my sleeplessness over every dark-lipped, drowsy beauty.

  5. Sa'd reproached me over her, but Sa'd did not know

    what the heart conceals when night enshrouds.

  6. How can I forget her—how indeed? Were it not for

    love, I would not have said 'how' and 'how indeed.'

  7. Do you think separation will relent before I

    die, so I may fulfill a wish in Lubna's presence?

  8. How often I wished to see the tamarisks of the

    foothill—if only a lover attained what he wished!

  9. And the nasal-voiced gazelle is my doom; how

    weary is one who loves the nasal-voiced gazelle!

  10. He sways at the breeze's bidding; and the branch of the bān-

    tree obeys the breeze when it sways.

  11. I am smitten with a weapon-lidded beloved; and how many

    lovers' eyelids has he bloodied and set streaming!

  12. Deadly to lovers in eyes and stature—

    how many raids of beauty he launched

  13. when they fletched their glances with lashes as arrows

    and wielded the supple, dusky spears of their figures!

  14. And the waist wastes beneath the fullness of that

    rump; my longing for him grows sound while I waste away.

  15. He visited, like full moons, late at night, yet did not slake

    my burning thirst, nor restore my failing strength.

  16. Ah, by God, what a tender and cruel

    beloved—and how distant and how near!

  17. He surpassed every beauty in loveliness, just as

    King al-Mujahid surpassed the generous in goodness.

Sol 6.1