Sol 5.6

  1. O traveler setting out at dawn, the frontier behind you in its evening,

    bearing the night-road through late afternoon and broad morning light,

  2. alight at the courtyard of Yusuf ibn Muhammad,

    and behold there bounty’s earth and sky.

  3. Convey greetings to magnanimity, for truly it

    is bounded by him, before and behind.

  4. I see the noble virtues—their very names

    have come among men to be derived from his own:

  5. like rain streaming down upon his brethren,

    like fire blazing against his enemies.

  6. The day I parted from him, I parted from the age

    I had found exulting on the day I met him.

  7. After him, I learned my own condition among a people

    who made life strait for me after the day of his death.

  8. I had not understood his bounty while he was near,

    until he went far away; then, in his remoteness, I understood it.

  9. May a hopeful praise-poet ransom you—one who returned

    only with his praise proven true and his hope fulfilled.

  10. After you were gone, death’s terror overtook him, and he turned back,

    calling upon you, though al-Lukam barred his call.

  11. And another hoped-for patron—I wrestled him for his bounty,

    and found him Mount Quds, turbaned in its clouds:

  12. a fortune from whose fringes stinginess drives men away,

    as the sea’s salt drives them from its water.

  13. He gave a pittance—that was the full extent of his means;

    then took it back—that was the full extent of his promise.

  14. What I had accepted, next morning I returned

    to his face, since it had come from his giving.

  15. I marveled with utter amazement at his stinginess,

    for all his generosity was but an hour of ostentation.

  16. He boasts a lineage; look, then, at his character—

    turning all else aside, do not look at his forefathers.

  17. He came courting panegyric; I said, “Clear its road,

    that it may pass you by—you are no fit match for it.”

Sol 5.6