Sol 6.1

  1. Love's health lies in ailing eyelids;

    it has robbed the eye of the pleasure of closing.

  2. Human custom was reversed, so we hurled

    targets toward those arrows.

  3. And one whose union is brief bestowed on me

    the long, broad nights of separation—

  4. a moon: whenever he appears, I journey away from him

    through the darkness of aversion and rejection.

  5. The heart's pledge was broken for him; thus the heart

    of the lovesick lover creaks without cease.

  6. So help me put longing off,

    for in his glances I have a debt-collector.

  7. And for the sword to strike my heart while sheathed,

    his eyelid droops, yet the edge is keen.

  8. He rose and hastened; the gloom wore an angry face,

    with a cup like the face of one joyful and content.

  9. It smiled, revealing its bubbles, and showed us

    pearls of dew on the cheeks of the gardens.

  10. Whenever the cloud-bank unfurled robes,

    lightning embroidered them with flashes.

  11. The south wind let the cloud's sleeve hang over

    the earth; and from its ample hem trailed

  12. clouds whose thunder was like the rumbling

    of a bull camel surrounded by yearling she-camels.

  13. And the rain clouds' throbbing veins within it

    are like bows, quick to twang.

  14. They loosed their arrows; the water has donned

    coats of mail, for fear of those quivers.

  15. They resembled al-Aziz's palm, and yet

    differed from it in smiting and raising up.

Sol 6.1