Sol 6.1

  1. A heart that turned among the forms

    of love's madness, by nature,

  2. on the hills of those dwellings,

    scatters the tears of its eyes,

  3. reddened, singly and in pairs,

    for love of the gazelle of the thickets.

  4. Ask about it: has it found delight,

    O white gazelle, in Ramah of the land of Sana'a,

  5. in its forenoons and late afternoons?

    Life is only in the shelter of the

  6. beloved and peers, beyond doubt;

    how many proofs attest to this!

  7. O Izz Din Allah, do not

    despair over a parting that scattered a gathering;

  8. patience is the trait of every virtuous person.

    Do not grieve over separation,

  9. for that distance is nothing new;

    no accomplished person has clung to his homeland.

  10. Have patience with time, which

    never ceases striving to bring adversity,

  11. and begrudges everything we desire.

    And know that you are under the governance

  12. of fate, in the accusative and nominative;

    every governing agent meets you within it.

  13. You are not oppressed, nor

    under obligation to a son of a base woman,

  14. O son of the noble and the exemplary.

    Rather, a critic of statements, you proclaim

  15. the truth openly, if you wish,

    and restrain the onslaught of every attacker.

  16. And you lighten the burdens upon

    a powerless person, defending and benefiting him,

  17. and lift from him every wrong.

    And you charge with a deadly assailant's charge,

  18. if a law is violated among the people

    by an ignorant dolt among the uncouth.

  19. How vast the gap between one who judges by what

    the evidence has established conclusively,

  20. and a youth devoid of rigorous inquiry,

    who recounts, from mere opinion,

  21. every calamity and fabrication!

    How can a tether compare with strongholds?

  22. Beware, O full moon of the virtuous,

    of being overwhelmed by that;

  23. patience is part of the nature of the virtuous.

    Tell me—may God watch over you—what

  24. is the nature of this yearning toward Sana'a,

    as you watch those going up and coming down?

  25. If you say, 'The spring abode of the one I loved—

    and oh, may God preserve it as an abode!—

  26. how many kindred souls are in it!'

    For raw gold, my lord, in

  27. its native lands is like dust in usefulness;

    and ask every sensible person about this.

  28. And the full moon, if it kept to stillness,

    would throughout all time be called

  29. among mankind a thin crescent.

    And the lion, were it not for its roaming

  30. through every wilderness, would die of hunger.

    Listen—may you be guided—and do not argue.

Sol 6.1