Sol 5.6

  1. If profit comes to the merchants of India,

    then make your worldly life a commerce with God.

  2. We obeyed the imams of Mecca’s faith

    for ten years—so what of a faith that came from Hajar?

  3. Good fortune overtakes some peoples and raises them high,

    and it may happen even to a god that a stone is worshiped.

  4. Its tribes exalted Dhāt Anwāṭ,

    though, for all its faults, it differed in nothing from other trees.

  5. So leave the human foxes in their dwellings,

    and let the wild foxes inhabit their dens.

  6. The Thaʿālib clans in Qays and Yemen are nothing

    but tame foxes shaking off their fur.

  7. Do you restrain a prince from burdening you

    with oppression, so that afterward whoever restrained him is praised?

  8. He once did good in the darkness of his youth,

    until, when his gray hair dawned like daybreak, he turned profligate.

  9. For indeed ʿIlbāʾ—the one so named among Asad—

    drove Death onward and made Hujr drink its water.

  10. Torment nearly rained upon us from the green vault,

    and the earth nearly bellowed beneath us in vexation.

  11. Though a body be sound, the faith has relapsed;

    you deem it at every moment gravely ill and delirious.

Sol 5.6