Sol 5.6

  1. Tell Ali—he whose friendship

    lays upon me the claims of brotherhood—that his confidant,

  2. your brother, has been accustomed by his constitution

    to taking his draught each spring, year after year.

  3. But now the affliction has festered within him and has

    sapped his strength and dried his body out.

  4. It has made its visits the habit of his days,

    though never before then had drowsiness overtaken it.

  5. And, on rising, he has begun to carry it

    in his two palms, as though it were crippled.

  6. I came with it to the physician, complaining,

    my tears like rain clouds pouring down.

  7. He said, “Return to me once you have kept to a diet, and eat

    a fat hen every day.”

  8. But how am I to get hold of a hen,

    when even an egg, to me, is like a sacrificial camel?

  9. May my Lord reward you, whenever you drink your fill, for what

    you have drunk on behalf of every lovely maiden.

Sol 5.6