Sol 5.6

  1. Say whatever comes to you; you will find an ear attentive to it.

    By God, your poetry—how sweet its rhymes!

  2. Were it to enter wine, wine would become lawful in our Law;

    but rather, wine has entered and dwelt within its meanings.

  3. Lawful magic: its spell-caster clothed himself in grace,

    until even the bewitched man’s healer followed his trail.

  4. How often I discerned a light among its firebrands,

    like the full moon, with visions appearing through its darkness.

  5. How many a necklace for our patron I used to bear,

    fashioned from the verse you wove to congratulate him.

  6. You made it flawless, and its owner thus deserved the crown;

    within it, his lofty virtues matched its pearls.

  7. In what verse do you see creative genius standing as its pillar?

    What a noble house of verse it was for its builder!

  8. The soul yearns for you affectionately whenever it remembers

    the days when you were this servant’s companion.

  9. The days when we were together and poetry was our third,

    we would draw near, and its ripe fruits draw near to our hands.

  10. We would ask one tribe to sing of another, and hear it sing

    what set the weathered campsite’s old haunts dancing.

  11. Those nights, when you were the full moon that illumined them—

    by God, my moon, how sweet his nights were!

  12. They brought two lights together, each for the other, in harmonious array,

    each with its aims unerringly directed toward the other.

  13. Were it not for you, my foot would never have stood firm on poetry’s horizon,

    nor would its herald have summoned me to recite.

  14. In you I found the one for whom I keep my hope alive,

    and poetry began to climb its stairways of ascent.

  15. Here is your companion—rather, here is his testimony;

    in it, your intimate friend has shared with you what you share with him.

  16. Live long, O Chosen One! I aspire to an art

    that gives life to souls through what its reciter imparts.

Sol 5.6