Sol 5.6

  1. It is as though, whenever I am with you, I stand looking down

    from a forbidding height: your speech is my ladder, a mighty steed for the climb.

  2. How many another relentless, biting calamity like this

    does one see bare its crooked molars against me!

  3. May my mother be your ransom at every grave calamity,

    if I cannot bear the likes of it.

  4. You drove it back—dreaded for its deadly end, awe-inspiring—

    and made my path easy past the places where it loomed.

  5. I would invoke your name—the surest good a man may have—

    when my daughters feared it might strike them with bereavement.

  6. You warded off what they feared, just as

    Abu Khalid in Syria spared his Akhtal from slaughter.

  7. And many a day when stars could be seen, you witnessed—

    its cavalry taking turns assailing it with lanceheads and arrows.

  8. Its stallions, amid its engulfing terrors, seemed

    to wade through mud when forced into its depths.

  9. There you held steadfast a noble soul, precious to you,

    though they knew you would never withhold it out of miserliness.

  10. You lavish it for God, hoping for His reward;

    no one else gives its like so freely.

  11. Faithful when the miser begrudges his wealth,

    and faithful when he grants a binding bond under his protection.

  12. I swear by that to which Quraysh made pilgrimage and at which it sacrificed,

    on the morning the ten slender, drooping-lipped camels went forth:

  13. your two hands indeed caught and saved my life after

    I had plunged down and my foot could gain no purchase there.

  14. Your father Ayyub built you a way to that high rank

    for which hands compete—and you were worthy of it.

  15. Your father is he whose name the horsemen invoke

    when, one day, his spearpoints sweep fiercely into view.

  16. A father through whom the dependent is made whole and sustained

    by seas of sweet water whose waters were never shallow.

Sol 5.6