Sol 6.1

  1. O you who cut the cord which, if you sever it,

    you sever a strong one—the very root of your cords.

  2. Look carefully—may God grant you Juhaynah's insight—

    so you may know how to manage your affairs with their outcome in view.

  3. Do not heed the slanderers in what they fabricate

    against one who has willingly listened to your words.

  4. Measure me by your reason, not by my enviers' words,

    and do not command the right hand to cut off your left.

  5. What the slanderer has woven between us is warning enough;

    God, my Lord, knows my condition and yours.

  6. A day will gather us when the man of truth shall triumph

    on it, while the man of deceit encounters destruction.

  7. By your life, I paid no heed to what an envier said,

    for people throughout time are just like that.

  8. If you oppose a man over his deeds,

    he attributes every fault to your actions.

  9. Do not dismiss your enemies' designs: they are a sickness

    that, once advanced, you cannot cure by your ingenuity.

  10. It is poison amid the water, remaining hidden,

    and it unleashes death upon you when you drink.

  11. They saw that I sought no good omen through you among them,

    nor did my bird fly leftward with your omen.

  12. I rode the leanest mount you had,

    and spurned their A'waj-bred horse and massive camel.

  13. Yet you never ceased setting grief and harm upon me,

    and they weave slander between me and closeness to you.

  14. So I was left pierced by your arrow: if it shields me,

    I perish, and the withdrawal of your arrowheads kills me outright.

  15. I kept you in reserve against something I feared would descend,

    but you burdened me with more of your assault than I could bear.

  16. And within my rain-clouds, while they lingered, there stirred—

    laden with your favors—the wind from your north.

  17. The sun of estrangement drove my weary mount away from ease,

    and from sincere hopes in your virtues,

  18. despite people who made me—without knowing

    that I am a slave, by your good fortune!—a master.

  19. They say, 'Suspicions have not turned bad through their deeds;

    and whoever thinks ill acts ill as well.'

  20. Do you have evidence against me in this,

    so you may be excused before God for your weariness of me?

  21. Yet I believe that, if mankind slandered me before you,

    all together, you would not countenance cutting me off.

  22. Even if Time, acting as a slanderer, roused you against me,

    an eye would defeat him with the sharp edge of your argument,

  23. and you would weigh, with reason's eye, each person

    for whom the days fashion pathways therein.

  24. May Nizar and Ya'rub ransom you from misfortunes,

    as they brought you glory on a day of combat.

  25. Rejoin the cord between me and you, hoping

    for a good final end from God through forgiveness.

  26. For I have no intercessor with you now but you,

    because, by God, I am one of your dependents.

  27. When a people intercede with you through their own people,

    nothing has brought me but your great majesty.

  28. And behold, you have left me a treasure

    that has emboldened my tongue to petition you.

  29. So feather me, as you pared me down where you once feathered me,

    and widen, through your favor, the pathways for my excuse,

  30. so that my cord may be attached to your cords,

    and my deficiency become complete through your perfection.

  31. For the sweetest of my hours in all of time is an hour

    when I kiss the dust of your sandals in the assembly.

Sol 6.1