Sol 6

  1. Exalted power and a fading sound

    have removed from you guard after guard.

  2. I see mute days arriving

    with an assault that did not come from a mute one.

  3. And I testify that I am wayward and ignorant,

    however far I go in inquiry and study.

  4. The soil is prepared, and I plant in it;

    then my arm is gone, while my planting grows.

  5. We have found that the passing of the two youths has destroyed

    the kings of the earth, Arab and Persian.

  6. The two righteous ones are not like them; rather,

    they are two lions seeking my horse.

  7. Everyone who has feared death will meet it;

    so lay down your two burdens, armor and shield.

  8. We have a Lord who has no equal;

    His command moves a mountain and sets it firm.

  9. The sun remains a servant before Him;

    what, then, is Bilqis, or Sitt Birs?

  10. A decree was written, though no pens

    were put to work on it, nor was it preserved on a page.

  11. The two newlyweds nourished an enemy in their son;

    even a weasel does less harm than he.

  12. A newborn has cast you into toil and worry,

    coming amid blood and planting.

  13. And the two youths are only like a youth

    among the youths beneath earth and its heaps.

  14. Calamities have grown alike: there is little distance between

    the silk of one wearer and another's coarse shirt.

  15. The prince was not nourished as carefully as

    a camel raised among the salam and shirs shrubs.

  16. It is as though singing at weddings were lamentation,

    and the mourners' voices were wedding merriment.

  17. Are your people, O world, fruits

    that cannot endure heat and cold?

  18. Even if they endured, something would destroy them

    through time's turns, with biting and teeth.

  19. And Ibn al-Zubayr is unsound in judgment

    if he substitutes yellow dye for clay.

Sol 6