Sol 6

  1. Perhaps the morning breeze, if it brushes the garden of Nu‘man,

    Will carry the heart’s trust from the gazelle among the ban trees.

  2. What burden would it be for the winds, roaming free,

    To bear in their breaths the captive lover’s need?

  3. What becomes of one who entrusts his secret to the wind

    And asks it, though it spreads tales, to keep silent?

  4. Like a guest, I question it in the drowse of sleep;

    Can dreams quench a thirsty person’s burning thirst?

  5. I ask of Najd, the aim of my longing,

    The playgrounds of the gazelles of al-Sarim at Nu‘man.

  6. When the north wind begins to breathe, I show

    The manner of one swaying with delight, drunk with joy.

  7. In this love I have known no forgetting;

    How could one robbed of his heart find solace?

  8. O two companions of my confidences, love has a farthest reach:

    One racer has made its distance clear, while another lags.

  9. Leave me be; blame cannot turn my reins aside,

    For I am occupied with something other than reproach.

  10. Though my reins resist restraint,

    Love of beauties commands and forbids me.

  11. I still honor the pledge with one who breaks it,

    And remember my beloved as long as I live, while my beloved forgets me.

  12. Do not deny the pain love has made me bear;

    Before this, it destroyed Qays and Ghaylan.

  13. God help me whenever lightning flashes in the dark:

    Beneath the night I turn a drowsy eye.

  14. When it draws its sword from the sheath of cloud,

    The sudden longing wears down my frame and wastes me.

  15. It appeared smiling above the heights of the pass,

    Reminding me of the old pledge and making me weep.

  16. I converse with a star on the horizon until we seem,

    With night drawing down its curtain, like two companions.

  17. Through all my talk with the horizon, I pass my passion to it;

    I watch its flock of stars for it, and it watches over me.

  18. It sends showers of rain from the flood of my tears,

    And strikes lightning’s fire from the flame of my grief.

  19. My yearning grew at the trace of a home I had known

    As a place where bright stars rose, or gazelles grazed,

  20. When the draught of union was never cut short

    And the clear nights had not been clouded by separation.

  21. Though my eyes failed to recognize the ruins,

    They claim kinship with my heart through memory and recognition.

  22. I have seen nothing like tears among those dwelling places:

    They watered the soil when they poured forth, and left me thirsty.

  23. Another thing that grieved me was the caravan setting out at night,

    With the wild winds led by reins.

  24. Like camel humps in a sea of mirage, you would think them

    Black ships swimming through it.

  25. Each rider on a lean mount looked so like it

    That the two seemed arrows shot into the heart of the waste.

  26. And one driver urged a humpbacked camel with a tucked-in flank,

    Resting his head upon her, above a curved, resonant saddle.

  27. Dazed with love, their heads sway,

    Drunk with sleep and consuming longing.

  28. They answered separation’s call, yielding to their passion;

    Parting from home can sometimes fulfill desire.

  29. They seek a place of return at the Intercessor’s grave,

    From which a many-branched garden comes into view.

  30. When they alight beside him in Tayba,

    How noble a host has welcomed such noble guests!

  31. There faith rose high and spread its shade,

    And the casting down of idols adorned the ornaments of divine oneness.

  32. A place where signs dawn, a refuge of mercy,

    A dwelling of angels, a place where faith appears.

  33. There, springs of welcome run clear;

    From them they are given the bounty of pardon and forgiveness.

  34. There, a greeting of peace is entrusted for delivery;

    He greets them in return with comfort and fragrant abundance.

  35. They speak closely to their Intercessor,

    In whom people far and near place their hope.

  36. Though they reached him without me, and I was left behind,

    It was a decree of the Judge who owns the earth.

  37. How many firm resolves I promised my soul I would fulfill,

    Though it has known me to offer excuses and delays.

  38. To God I complain of these proud souls:

    They turn from what endures and are beguiled by what passes.

  39. Would that I knew whether my hopes might help me

    Leave my family and neighbors to seek his pleasure,

  40. And satisfy my heart’s desires by being seen

    Rubbing my cheek and eyelids in his soil.

  41. To you, Messenger of God, comes the plea of one far away,

    His heart trembling, his eyes fixed on the horizon, distraught.

  42. A stranger in the farthest west, whose steps are fettered

    By youth spent in carefree pleasure and loss.

  43. His longing for al-‘Aqiq and its ban trees grows keen,

    And he yearns for it as long as days and nights renew.

  44. When lightning from the Hijaz flashes late at night,

    He repeats a yearning sigh in the darkness.

  45. O giver of mercy, dispeller of blindness,

    Rescuer of the drowning and deliverer of the captive,

  46. I stretch out a needy hand, O most merciful one;

    My sin has driven me to stand as a culprit.

  47. My greatest means of appeal is your intercession,

    To which Jesus and Moses son of ‘Imran seek refuge.

  48. You are God’s beloved, the last of His messengers,

    The one most honored with nearness and favor.

  49. It is enough that He has called you by His exalted names:

    That is a perfection untouched by defect.

  50. You are the cause of this universe’s being;

    Without you, existence would not have taken its many forms.

  51. Without you, the heavens would not have displayed a luminary,

    Nor would their necks have been adorned with shooting stars.

  52. The pure essence of glory from the house of Hashim,

    The secret heart of pride from the house of ‘Adnan,

  53. Lord of all creation descended from Adam,

    And the noblest envoy to humans and jinn.

  54. How many signs you have raised on the horizon of longing;

    Through them, the dawn of guidance is plain to the wakeful.

  55. The sun revealed by day to one who sees

    Is no clearer in its appearance or its proof.

  56. How noble the signs with which you challenged us;

    No signs compare with those of the firmly ordered Furqan.

  57. How can the eloquent hope to praise you when

    Your praise has come in noble revelation and the Qur’an?

  58. May God bless you as long as rain pours down

    And a dove coos among the branches of the ban tree.

  59. And may He support our lord Ibn Nasr, for he

    Is the noblest man to whom kingship and rule are ascribed.

  60. He celebrated your birth as would please you,

    The birth through which Islam showed a joyful face.

  61. Namesake of the Messenger of God, defender of his faith,

    He honors him in private and in public.

  62. He inherits glory’s secret from the house of Khazraj,

    And is the noblest man claimed by the tribes of Qahtan.

  63. He sends his battalions across the breadth of the sky;

    Even mighty kings submit to them.

  64. They are green gardens, their armor like flowing locks,

    Bearing nothing but slender spears of murran wood.

  65. Horses answer one another within them, while at their flanks

    Lionhearted men charge from above eaglelike mounts.

  66. On every horse that tugs at its rein rides

    A generous giver of suppers, a thrusting warrior.

  67. The spears enter with their shafts thirsty

    And return from every supple foe well watered.

  68. By God, in lands laid waste by drought,

    The cloud of his generosity has held famine back.

  69. When rain clouds fail the people and drought comes,

    His generosity and the rain clouds are alike.

  70. A leader who restored rule after its loss

    With a sword neither blunt nor slow.

  71. He left the ruins of error crumbling

    And raised again the loftiest building through Islam.

  72. He built up a realm, with glory as its witness,

    Whose gatherings shine with good fortune and faith.

  73. Its radiant smile delighted the distant frontier,

    And Islam swayed for it like one arrayed in finery.

  74. May good be yours: how splendid your traits, like Hatim’s,

    With ‘Amr’s daring and Sahban’s eloquence.

  75. May you endure, O aid of the land and its people,

    Attaining your aims and bringing peace to homelands.

Sol 6