Sol 5.6

  1. Hard indeed is our bidding you find consolation

    on the morning you lost your dearest child.

  2. By my father’s life, the nights have struck us

    with a pang in our throats—and what a pang!

  3. A full moon has set before its light was whole,

    a branch was lopped before its growth was full,

  4. a sword was nicked before the time to draw it,

    a spear laid low before it could be brandished,

  5. and an infant died before he rode a steed

    save the nursemaid’s arms and the cradle.

  6. Tell me, then, what use could he make of the steeds

    they had prepared for him, and the robes of silk?

  7. Thus he left us with grief abiding,

    which we endure, and with a mind unmoored.

  8. How I marvel at how close was our coming to congratulate

    his father on him, and our coming to console.

  9. I would excuse Time, had it destroyed only

    an elder weary of weakness and incapacity.

  10. For people are like crops: their freshness is nurtured

    until the season of the reaping.

  11. Yet all it uproots are branches

    tender-stemmed and straight in their swaying.

  12. What harm would it have done Death, had it struck

    one akin to itself, ransoming a king with a vizier?

  13. The days refuse to leave a lion cub

    to any lion, or a kid to any she-goat.

  14. O son of Mubarak ibn Husayn, have patience:

    the demon of grief is humbled by patience.

  15. A shaft like yours does not bend before it,

    however calamities may test or press it.

  16. Such is the decree of Fate—so who can give solace

    for what is gone from him, and who can console?

  17. These are the days: they spare no great man

    for grandeur of station or excess of might,

  18. nor do they grant the young in years survival

    for one who clasps him close, or for any safeguard.

  19. My excuse for coming late to you is a fever

    whose heat I battle; perhaps it will waste me away.

  20. Though another attended the rites of consolation, I

    have discharged mine through this letter of condolence.

  21. Here I am, my eyelids raw

    from your bereavement, and my heart recoiling.

  22. I am the friend in whom no fault is found

    except my love—and that fault earns recompense.

  23. For I have proclaimed your merit before others,

    and it was foremost; I am yours where loyalty is proved.

Sol 5.6