Sol 5.6

  1. Will a lover recover, or ever come to his senses?

    I shall surely recover—or do you think one consumed by longing can forget?

  2. Whoever is passionately enthralled by beautiful women

    is naturally apt to be exposed through them.

  3. And whoever wanders distraught in a love like mine—

    patient endurance does not befit him.

  4. Shall I forget, or force my soul to endure without her,

    while the branch of my ardent longing is tender and green?

  5. Pour down, O sky of the eyelid, pour down;

    for lightning-flashes of memory have gleamed.

  6. O my eye, help me, if I pass the night in longing;

    I shall pour forth whatever tears I pour.

  7. O my heart, which has never ceased wasting away,

    let your throbbing, my heart, increase.

  8. For now I no longer fear reproach—

    does a drowning man fear getting wet?

  9. Many a beauty, moonlike in face,

    has sung of youth, making the enamored lover yearn.

  10. Her singing steals through every limb,

    and through my fingertips, as pure wine courses.

  11. You see us, from the pure vintage of her voice, already

    so drunk that we cannot speak—

  12. silent, while passion speaks in our stead;

    and within us we can bear nothing but love.

  13. And when she danced, she swayed like a ben-tree bough,

    weighed down by passion, which encircled it.

  14. From love of her, through this heart of mine,

    waters flowed, and my veins drank from them.

  15. ( )

    ()

    As though I were Ibn Hujr and she were Fāṭimah,

    at Dāra, when the boughs bore them both.

  16. Poetry surges within my breast, yet

    it may fall short of expressing ardent passion.

  17. To you—to you—I complain that my heart

    and tears are thus: one captive, one set free.

  18. Since you went far away, I have kept company with dejection,

    sore-eyed and choking in my tears.

  19. Sleep flees from my eyelids

    as a coy beloved flees her ardent lover.

  20. Though my gaze and the sickness issuing from me lie

    but a bowshot from you, my recovery is far away.

  21. The hand of maladies tosses me onto my belly,

    then onto my back, that a clinging sickness may devour me.

  22. Has my appearance alarmed you, and my condition grieved you,

    so that carnelian-red tears streamed from your eyes?

  23. Yet I see that you have forgotten an intimate companion,

    whom prosperity and adversity alike found loyal.

  24. Whenever reunion is mentioned, he spends the evening

    with my ardor nearly driving him onward in yearning.

  25. If your cord of affection has suffered such a severance,

    the cord of my affection remains firm.

  26. I remain, and my covenant is unstained;

    my love is neither adulterated nor diluted.

  27. Do you forget our morning at the monastery,

    when sunrise crowned the brow of the horizon?

  28. When the bell was ringing and the maidens

    were chanting, while souls yearned for them?

  29. ()

    And days in Zahlé that have now passed,

    when ours there was a fresh and gracious life?

  30. I divided a heart among its hills—

    throats nearly choked upon it.

  31. One share of it is with you, dear son of my affection,

    and another among its full-bosomed maidens.

  32. ( )

    And at Dayr al-Najāh, one morning, we

    were fettered by love, bewildered and yearning.

  33. I said when my darling appeared before my eyes,

    amid youths delightful to behold:

  34. ()

    Is this the Garden of Paradise, or are these

    the hills of al-Bardoun—were it not for the Catholicos?

  35. Leave fantasy now, and return to my reproach

    of one whose companionship I trust.

  36. I shall keep brandishing a spear of reproach,

    as Shaqīq once came brandishing a spear.

  37. Have you two forgotten me, by your Lord, or merely feigned forgetting?

    Your silence—I never knew a friend to act so.

  38. ()

    Remember, in the garden of Damascus,

    the covenants that disloyalty nearly angered,

  39. when every lovely maiden was close beside us,

    and her saliva spared us any need of red wine.

  40. And do not forget the pledges when we journeyed by night

    through a night whose face was dark and pitch-black,

  41. to a gathering hall of statuesque, dark-eyed beauties,

    while our night journey groaned, exhausted.

  42. I shall rein in my reproach for a while;

    perhaps some affair of yours detains you.

  43. Otherwise, my rhymes come obediently,

    and the steed of my poetry races ahead.

  44. I am eloquent of tongue, a masterly speaker, without false pretension;

    I am a gallant, untainted by debauchery.

  45. Here I am: I did not compose poetry merely so

    it might be said, “A clever and fluent poet,”

  46. for my lofty station is a station

    before whose might even the sheer mountain falls.

  47. Yet in your affection there is estrangement and harshness—

    is this what friendship and its rights decree?

  48. Thus should elegant diction be,

    with limpid meaning, fresh and delicate.

  49. If I have excelled, excellence is my habit;

    and is anyone but I forever worthy of it?

  50. And if not, I have such a host of cares

    that even part of them confounds the clever and discerning.

  51. Indeed, troubles have constricted my breast;

    I see the very breast of space grow tight with them.

  52. And in closing, peace be upon you from me—

    a greeting that knows you as the faithful companion.

Sol 5.6