Sol 5.6

  1. O you in whom this august court places its hopes,

    I have made my camel kneel in its inner court, honoring old covenants.

  2. Through Yusuf I reached the lodging place of guests,

    the watering place of bounty and the encampment of delegations—

  3. the poor man’s mainstay and the hard-pressed man’s relief,

    the stranger’s refuge and the fugitive’s shelter.

  4. He took on virtues to earn acclaim,

    fortifying their fresh splendor with inherited glory.

  5. And when he had completed the edifice of grandeur

    and reached the farthest mark of the long, weary course,

  6. and knew with certainty that he had left no goal

    for any aspirant, nor room for any increase,

  7. and that dwellings are bodies for bodies,

    he undertook to raise a lofty palace.

  8. He chose the most magnificent marble for it,

    and they brought every mighty, massive block,

  9. so that its strength might make the structure firm,

    sound in nature and long-lived.

  10. Then the rocks came, dragged toward it

    by giants from among the able throngs.

  11. When they hauled them in, they bent

    their backs and stretched every neck toward it,

  12. as though they worshipped a rock,

    and that was a low murmuring in prostration.

  13. The columns, whenever you looked

    at them, seemed laid upon a timber beam—

  14. cradles upon which a twin pair lay pillowed,

    swaddled daughters of adamant rock.

  15. As though their cartwheels’ circling spheres

    held clouds laden with chunks of ice—

  16. ships cleaving the sea of the open waste

    and making toward you through wilderness after wilderness;

  17. as though the masts upon their decks

    had been struck down for fear of some dreadful terror.

  18. Or, once set upright, they are palm trunks,

    bursting with dense-clustered shoots of good fortune.

  19. Mercury undertook to perfect them,

    and from you Saʿd al-Suʿūd—the Luck of Lucks—greeted them.

  20. Mute oryx-maidens who had never known speech,

    virgins, little daughters of a prolific mother—

  21. nubile maidens who put the houris of curtained bowers to shame,

    white of body and tall of stature.

  22. They donned the robe of newborn dawn

    and trailed the train of the new age,

  23. crying, “Glad tidings of meeting the Imam!”

    Then the glad tidings came, making straight across the open plain.

  24. O my lord, your servant has no

    turning from your gate for as long as time endures.

  25. I have come to you to plead the excuse of improvisation,

    though it keeps to a sound and upright course.

  26. Had time allowed leisure to polish it,

    it would have surpassed even ʿAbd al-Hamid’s utmost reach.

  27. For it is neither dull-witted nor tongue-tied,

    neither slow nor sluggish.

  28. May you remain, bestowing largesse and generosity,

    unfurling banners and granting victory to armies.

Sol 5.6