Sol 5.6

  1. My Lord, love me, and love my family;

    pardon my people, and bless my homeland.

  2. My Lord, refine me and purify my whole being

    of every mote that clings to me and every stain.

  3. Turn all misfortune and harm away from me,

    and spare me, O God, the evil of tribulations.

  4. My Lord, heal the soul of its maladies

    before it perishes—and my body perishes.

  5. Whatever has been, has been; and had not that which issued

    from You brought it into being, it would not have been.

  6. Through You I seek guidance; direct me aright toward

    the soundest paths and the surest ways.

  7. My Lord, grant me success, and be my aid in

    thanking You for the blessings You have bestowed on me—

  8. with pens whose traces are purest,

    as I number them, and with the purest tongues.

  9. My Lord, grant me safety, for I seek refuge

    with the plea of one afraid and seeking protection.

  10. My soul has nothing, concerning You, that it possesses

    except what every believer’s soul possesses:

  11. trust never mingled with doubt,

    and certainty untouched by weakness.

  12. My Lord, this is my rope, which I lower before You;

    My Lord, lengthen my rope, and do not disgrace me.

  13. Grant my people, from You, lofty good fortune

    that scales the highest summits.

  14. Oppression has crouched upon them in a pit

    where the assaults of time crouch heavily.

  15. Whenever I ask, “Is there no uprising?”

    one rises among them, only to stir my grief.

  16. Many a night I have spent awake for their sake,

    while the visiting specter of slumber shunned me,

  17. plunging into an engulfing depth that never clears,

    formed of my cares, like a raging ocean—

  18. towering, its waves hurling themselves onward,

    while ships wander bewildered among hopes.

  19. I cannot tell whether they are in a homeland

    that gathers the living, or in a burial ground.

  20. Woe to my people! When they perished, they were beguiled by

    the grave’s splendor and the beauty of the shroud.

  21. My soul has settled into despair, while within me

    a storm of cares has never grown still.

  22. Consultative rule came dear to them, so they purchased

    what they purchased from it at the highest price.

  23. Then they slept an age-long sleep, yet

    the eyes of tribulation never slept upon them.

  24. O physicians of the people, if I reproach, it is because

    your malady has afflicted and wasted me sorely.

  25. Treat the sick whose hearts have gone blind;

    their disease has spread into their eyes.

  26. Treat the disease before it disables you,

    and lift the anguish before it destroys me.

  27. They squandered the realm’s domain, and they

    laid it beneath the sole of the scorner.

  28. They abandoned it, terrorized it, and demolished

    of it what had exhausted the builder’s labor.

Sol 5.6