Sol 5.6

  1. I search my soul: am I the same man

    I knew in my yesterdays, or am I someone else?

  2. I learned the many branches of knowledge through study and experience;

    what is wrong with me, that I have reached ignorance at its furthest bound—what a state!

  3. I see that, after my hair turned gray, passion has returned to me,

    restoring the world's youth to me and making me lovestruck.

  4. I have become as though I had never known a single truth;

    and if love calls, am I anything but human?

  5. Ah, look at me—a middle-aged man, seen crouching

    like a child bent over something, turning it this way and that:

  6. in his two palms, a blossom radiant with rays,

    with a sunlike disk adorned by a crown of colors.

  7. As I let my gaze roam over its features,

    where manifold forms of beauty and artistry lay,

  8. suddenly I was scattering that ordered crown

    one petal after another, repeating as children do.

  9. I questioned the petals—oh, if only I knew what they knew:

    Does the fair one love me, or does she not love me?

Sol 5.6