Sol 6

  1. Whose deserted dwelling is at al-Jazʿ, its surroundings desolate?

    Its traces were erased by calamities, as my endurance was erased.

  2. Its familiar joy was dismantled when

    Its environs were emptied of its gazelles and playgrounds.

  3. I lingered over it after its sky grew dark

    And its moons and stars had set.

  4. There I seemed to be Suhā, my mount the pole star;

    My tears were rain, and my eyelids its clouds.

  5. I kept weeping for it and for the days we knew there

    Until its loneliness and wide deserts made me weep.

  6. At al-ʿAqīq my tears told what had happened

    And wrote out my complaint, making its writer eloquent.

  7. Its story flowed through the channels of the lowlands,

    Though its bearer had not known how to tell it in distress.

  8. Through it I softened the deaf stones with my complaint;

    What else, when I have been addressing a calamity of time?

  9. My patience parted from me, though it had been my companion;

    How many a companion proves regrettable in the end!

  10. I said to it, ‘Go, departing like my heart,’

    For my heart has betrayed me, and I do not punish it.

  11. Before you both, my joy and ease had already betrayed me,

    And my eyelid rejected sleep and turned away from it.

  12. In my plight I relied on the tears of an eye

    Whose channels overflow and whose outlets run bloody.

  13. Yet my tears did not quench my burning thirst; rather,

    The one who sheds them cools only the hot sand around me.

  14. I have not forgotten them as the white camels were saddled for departure

    And cries of ill omen sounded at the parting.

  15. They set off, urging the mounts into the night journey,

    While the stars of the horizon traveled in their own procession.

  16. The camels’ saddles had sunk upon their humps,

    Which streamed with blood, their wounds its channels.

  17. What a caravan, mounting its noble camels

    And leading its restless spare mounts beside them!

  18. They watched a flash of lightning over al-Ghaḍā,

    For which their noble, swift camels yearned.

  19. A spirited horse neighed, a lion roared,

    And a gazelle bleated; the one driving the camels pressed them on.

  20. Within the caravan was a gazelle sheltered in a curtained litter,

    Its cheeks polished, and its breast gleaming.

  21. It rebuked whoever reproached one lovesick for it,

    Praised those who praised it, and deemed its critic at fault.

  22. The record of sins slips from its lover’s scribe,

    And its reckoner cannot count those it has slain.

  23. If it cast a glance at someone free of love,

    Stealing it past the talebearers, his ways of escape grew narrow.

  24. No hopeful longing can reach union with it;

    Can one who watches the full moon hope to possess it?

  25. Before its guarded domain stand every slender, dark spear

    And a sharp, deadly sword whose edges never tire.

  26. A jealous guardian grows suspicious if a breeze passes him;

    Its scent troubles him with imagined suspicions.

  27. He looks out as though from coals that scatter sparks,

    And turns both his gaze and shoulders away from it.

  28. Do not blame me if you have wandered in longing and sorrow,

    For longing surely overcomes a person.

  29. May passing rain clouds pour their showers

    Upon a meadow in Syria that I did not choose to leave.

  30. I shall weep for a happy age that passed there

    With a wounded eyelid whose streams of tears never cease.

  31. How often I lived there in comfort,

    My days soft as fine cloth, their draughts sweet.

  32. We gave no thought to separation while we were neighbors,

    But time overtook us with its unjust blows.

  33. Time is treacherous: it takes back what

    It once lent of pleasures. May its taker perish.

  34. I once had a heart that could bear sorrow

    When the means of consoling myself failed me.

  35. But calamities wore down its strength

    Until it cracked when its frame grew too tight for grief.

  36. Longing drew me toward it,

    While the bonds of a calamity I struggled against held back my resolve.

  37. The breeze kept wearing me thin whenever it blew

    From Syria, until I resembled one exhausted by travel.

  38. My doctor grew weary, and my visitors left my side;

    No one comforts me but a dove whose call I answer.

  39. At times it ceases its wailing and weeping,

    But the streams of my tears never tire.

  40. There is no reunion, unless God permits us to meet,

    For one left helpless while time makes war on him.

  41. Otherwise I am dying and will be laid

    In a stranger’s grave where no mourners raise their cries.

Sol 6