Sol 6.1

  1. Are these traces of a dwelling, or lines of a book?

    Its freshness has faded with the ages.

  2. Its visitor passes by with no wish fulfilled,

    and its questioner is turned away without an answer.

  3. And often time was dear

    to us, for the loved ones it contained.

  4. In days when life's garden was green, and love

    was a peer to its pale gazelles, all of one age.

  5. Fair, full-breasted maidens, alike in innocence,

    yet differing from one full-breasted maiden with drunken eyelids.

  6. She gazes, and at her glance hearts become

    sick in forgetfulness, sound in suffering.

  7. She lifted part of the lofty curtain and greeted me

    with fingertips bearing traces of faded dye.

  8. She wondered at my anguish, then smiled,

    revealing bright teeth that would be sweet to kiss.

  9. If you would oblige me—and I have asked no hardship—

    you would temper love's heat with the coolness of your saliva.

  10. And if I complain of my thirst, you are indeed the one who

    long ago made the mirage my drink.

  11. And you chided me for loving you, so much that I

    fear your reproach if I confide to you what ails me.

  12. And I know full well—though a lover has his folly—

    that youthful passion after gray hair is merely feigning youth.

  13. Yet if betrayal were becoming in love,

    I would have forgotten you, with some of my youth still in me.

  14. Do not go to extremes about Shams ibn Aklub: they are

    my claw, with which I tore the foe, and my fang.

  15. Leave calamities be, for he will ward them off for you,

    wherever Abu al-Khattab confronts them.

  16. A resourceful man: when Time reaches his courtyard,

    its consequences recoil upon their heels.

  17. He championed generosity over ancestral wealth, and did not pause

    short of noble deeds with a doubter's hesitation.

  18. No cloud is a worthy comparison for him,

    that I should call his bounty a cloud's downpour.

  19. And if I sought his equal, I would then

    surely burden my camels with a search for the impossible.

  20. In his company I knew qualities that never approached

    blame, and my companions were free of blemish.

  21. I chose him as a blade keen in the swing, and I was not

    one to gird on a blunt sword that glances off.

  22. On the day of his glory, the sons of Imran were linked

    with noble deeds of Tayy lineage.

  23. A people who humble the mountains, firmly rooted though

    their peaks are, through the weight of their minds.

  24. They trailed the hems of Athami cloth; it was only

    embroidered cloaks upon lions of the forest.

  25. They settled amid the Two Mountains, where hang

    white clouds from hills and plateaus.

  26. Holding fast to the antiquity of their nobility,

    and to a pure, choice lineage in Aswadan.

  27. They create new noble deeds, having exhausted

    themselves in them through arduous toil.

  28. As though they had been first to ancient glory,

    in nearness to it, or had won mastery over ancestral honor.

  29. They entrusted affairs to al-Hasan and yielded

    to one who shuns baseness and refuses it.

  30. He goes forth; the pomp of kings shows him to you

    exalted, as does the majesty of scribes.

  31. He surpassed men—and men differ in worth—

    through distinctive qualities of character and refinement.

  32. It is as though the sea had enlisted his right hand,

    and through it fulfilled one of its desires.

  33. And noble deeds are gifts withheld

    except from the generous, lavish giver.

  34. Through you, O Abu al-Khattab, my quest became easy,

    and my firebrand shone in the darkness of calamities.

  35. And if your two hands have favored me with a gift

    lavish, and my surroundings have grown lush from your bounty,

  36. then I am your cousin, and affection lies between us;

    then rhymes are the rest of our kinship.

Sol 6.1