Sol 5.6

  1. Maturity is the lovelier path, Ahmad;

    the love of beauties is even farther gone than your youth.

  2. Once there remained in you a trace of love for them;

    today that last trace is all but spent.

  3. The Harut of your poetry, after the Marut of youth,

    grew weary, and its helpful companion parted from it.

  4. When they heard you, they said, “Verse by a beardless youth!”

    “If only its poet were the fresh-faced bringer of joy!”

  5. What have playful, delicate women to do with a poet

    who makes love poetry a snare with which to hunt?

  6. How often you gathered all their hearts in passion,

    deceiving those you shunned and those you wooed;

  7. you mocked the talebearer and plotted against the censor—

    yet today you seek someone to tattle and find fault.

  8. Was it that whenever you encountered graceful maidens, passion distracted you,

    and whenever you found poetry, the graceful beloved proved elusive?

Sol 5.6