Sol 5.6

  1. May God pardon the one who did not visit me to bid farewell;

    for because of him—on that account—my eyes have grown sore.

  2. A gazelle grazed Iraq’s herbage, and its roads

    were broad; then its grazing grounds came to lie in the Hijaz.

  3. He was a prince for whom no intercessor’s plea availed,

    and he accepted no bribe from me by which I might win his favor.

  4. I yearned for the people of the Hijaz when there appeared

    Suhayl of Yemen, and its rising places came into view.

  5. A letter came to me from a beguiling beloved; its opening read:

    “Peace be upon you as long as lightning’s gleaming flash is lovely.”

  6. In his letter he lamented the longing that afflicted him,

    yet greater than that is what his breast conceals.

  7. The letter kept speaking intimately to me, as though

    his fingers were moving its very script before me.

  8. I spent the night like one gripping a snake by the head,

    trying to coax it away from himself while it sought to outwit him.

Sol 5.6