Sol 5.6

  1. Only the righteous preserve piety,

    and with God the final resting place is settled.

  2. To God you shall return; and with

    God lie all affairs’ coming and going.

  3. Everything He has reckoned in record and knowledge;

    before Him all secrets stand revealed.

  4. The day the bounties granted those He favors spread everywhere—

    laden, full-uddered virgin clouds,

  5. proud, their udders high upon their peaks,

    making boughs and towering palms bend.

  6. On the Day no sin-stained soul shall enter

    into mercy save through acquittal and a plea;

  7. and lovely maidens He has prepared for those who bear

    witness, and forgiveness from Him, the Ever-Forgiving;

  8. and an abode—how noble an abode!—

    of quiet rest, slumber, and honeyed drink.

  9. If there is any good in life, I have been

    granted respite—if respite could avail.

  10. I have lived an age, yet nothing endures through

    the days except Yarmaram and Tiʿār,

  11. Kulāf, Ḍalfaʿ, and Buḍayʿ,

    and what rises above Khubbat Taymār;

  12. and the stars that follow one another through

    the night, among them one on the right veering aside;

  13. unceasing is their passage, while their setting turns them

    aside, as noble ten-month-pregnant she-camels are turned.

  14. Then, when they vanish from our sight, it is obscure

    whether their tethers are long or short.

  15. ʿĀmir has perished; nothing remains of her

    in the meadows of al-Aʿrāf except the dwellings—

  16. only a mirage, an enclosure, and a roofed shelter,

    scattered by the winds and rains.

  17. And I see ʿĀmir’s people have bid me farewell—

    not some folk whose horses are mere colts:

  18. they station them at every dreaded frontier;

    astride them—by my grandfather’s life!—are splendid men.

  19. They never dishonored a protégé amid the vicissitudes

    of time, nor were they loathed by their in-laws.

  20. Upon ʿĀmir be peace and praise,

    wherever in the lands they settle or journey.

Sol 5.6