Sol 5.6

  1. The calamities of time have overstepped their bounds,

    and its days have spent their utmost force.

  2. It sentenced us to death, exchanging

    against our will, the bright nights for their dark ones.

  3. By God, what ails the loved ones, that they have turned

    away from us and chosen the estrangement of parting?

  4. They accepted decay as their companion and settled

    after their homes, into their graves and burial niches.

  5. They yearned for long life—yet it is

    He who brings souls forth who destroys them, to bring them back.

  6. The days toyed with them until

    the hands of decay fastened their fetters beneath the earth.

  7. It is as though those bodies were drawn swords,

    for Death fashioned graves as their scabbards.

  8. The hand of time wove from their shrouds

    robes, and laid necklaces among them.

  9. Spring clothed their resting places in its blossoms,

    when the morning rainclouds fulfilled their pledge and watered them.

  10. The spreading breeze passed through them, till

    the breaths of the north wind perfumed their soil.

  11. Was there ever a life made sweet for us, but

    Time wore away both its old and its new?

  12. Or an eye that tasted sleep for one night,

    but calamities followed and ended its slumber?

  13. Or an edifice whose foundations were raised for glory,

    but Fate demolished its firm base?

  14. Grievous to high glory was the death of a noblewoman;

    the virtues rent their robes in mourning for her.

  15. A cherished woman, lost, whose loss made seem slight

    the lives of lesser women lost after her.

  16. She died, laid upon the wilderness, slain;

    how my soul grieved for her when it saw her laid there.

  17. O Qays, through this our breasts have kindled

    a fire within our ribs, its fuel blazing.

  18. Rise, then, to exact blood vengeance, holding nothing back,

    until you annihilate the enemies’ whole host.

Sol 5.6