Sol 5.6

  1. Fifty years have been completed for me—and five more;

    and I have fallen ill with a sickness that relapses.

  2. Within my body I have found opposites:

    a branch grows supple while my frame grows stiff.

  3. The beautiful women shy away from me, as

    young gazelles shrink from the fierce lion’s gaze.

  4. The hair at my temples has turned white

    and thinned, as though its blackness were but a breath.

  5. A lifetime withers where it grows—

    one planting—while another puts on fresh bloom.

  6. I listened closely to the days when they spoke

    their admonition: they are mute orators.

  7. After confusion, I understood what they explained;

    but confusion, when present, makes explanation vanish.

  8. Gray age has become the cause of my loneliness, yet

    after youth, I find comfort in remembering it.

  9. Having kept company with two ages in my life,

    this one’s lamp was the moon, and that one’s the sun.

  10. The young man’s world must perish—for that it was created—

    and within it jinn and humankind must die.

  11. Indeed, we are all Adam’s offspring,

    and our death is of the same kind as his.

  12. How little of the wall remains when

    the foundation beneath its structure has collapsed.

  13. O Lord, surely the fire is fierce,

    and every hearing ear has some sense of it.

  14. Do not make my body firewood for it,

    lest the soul within me be burned there.

  15. Be gentle with a servant whose gaze is terrified

    on the Day of Reckoning, and whose speech is a whisper.

Sol 5.6