Sol 5.6

  1. Now, carry this word to Abu Bakr:

    a message from a loyal brother,

  2. who calls to you in all sincerity,

    not out of some wounded grievance.

  3. I think Time has turned you against me,

    and you have yielded to betrayal:

  4. you show no desire for closeness,

    yet no aversion to estrangement,

  5. nor let me, among you, cross

    your mind or your memory.

  6. Do you forget the days when we

    mingled like water with wine,

  7. two intimates, two sworn companions,

    through hardship and ease,

  8. bending together over delight—

    —in sobriety and in drunkenness,

  9. seen in the firmament of letters

    like the sun or the full moon,

  10. just as wisdom harmonized

    the lute and the pipe?

  11. Then your garden—

    —s, all blossom and bloom, distracted you,

  12. and all you built for seclu—

    —sion, whether house or palace,

  13. and all you gathered in plantings,

    in tilled crops and seed,

  14. in bitter orange and basil,

    fresh-plucked and sweetly fragrant,

  15. mimicking the leaves of manu—

    —scripts in their illumination and gold,

  16. whose exquisite fra—

    —grance courses like safety amid terror,

  17. like healing amid sickness,

    and like ease amid hardship;

  18. with scattered blossoms like your word—

    —s, whether in verse or prose.

  19. I, too, have land and a garden,

    and a river flowing through them,

  20. like molten white sil—

    —ver over rock-hard amber;

  21. but both are barer

    than smooth stone and rock,

  22. empty of vegetation,

    drowned in rainwater,

  23. like a virgin with no husband,

    or a head without a hair upon it.

  24. So grant me a share of the plant—

    —ing you possess, O my treasure;

  25. for long ago—may goodness be yours—

    you planted affection in my breast.

  26. And in your planting, if you bestow it,

    there lies something of a marriage bond.

Sol 5.6