Sol 5.6

  1. O monk of the monastery, we have repented of loving them,

    and truly turned back—no more “ifs,” no more “buts.”

  2. Nor any passion whose first stirring makes me weep, only for it to be crushed

    by my songs, with memories of you, O Wadi al-Sir.

  3. We have grown gray, and evenly over both temples has settled

    a grayness at which my fortune wept and made me weep.

  4. O monk of the monastery, we have repented; yet life, as

    you see, coils around one like me with a serpent’s twisting.

  5. Tell the custodians to open the monastic cells for me:

    the wind is bitterly cold, and the chill of the Ghawr has hurt me.

  6. O monk of the monastery, Gilead’s scroll—

    I folded it away, and unto it offered my sacrifice.

  7. What could you do, a shepherd with no flock,

    if someone came to your side and vindicated me?

  8. O monk of the monastery, blessed are those whose sorrows cried aloud—

    their sorrows—while the wolves of my sorrows assailed me.

  9. Open the door for me and admit me into your company,

    for Gilead’s cold, O our Father, has challenged me.

  10. I am not Christ; yet your Magdalene,

    like Jephthah’s daughter, tends me today with her tears.

  11. Bid its maidens farewell, O Valley of the Ghawr, if there draws near

    a death I once feared—and which now fears me.

  12. As for love and love’s anguish, O Mayy—if their days

    have passed, then let the days mourn me.

  13. Let Wadi al-Shita and its gazelles weep after me;

    and let Heshbon weep after me—the waters of Hisban.

  14. As for me, what I endure is enough:

    an anguish by which, O people, my fires were kindled.

  15. O neighbors of al-Yan, this bān tree declares that you have gone—

    would that it had never been, O neighbors of the bān!

  16. You blame me, my son, for keeping company with her.

    O Wasfi, suppose I were Jalal al-Din Davani;

  17. or suppose I were Ibn Rushd in his everyday clothes,

    or Omar Khayyam, O you who condemn me;

  18. or Avicenna, whose gatherings

    were for conviviality, where the camel-driver urged the caravan onward in song.

  19. You want me—woe to you!—to be a sheikh made wholly of piety,

    of rough disposition, whom my devil rejects.

  20. Yesterday, O Memory, you fancied me an apparition

    through which my torments and my sorrows circled.

  21. It had fluttered faintly; then, after keeping vigil, they slept—

    my companions—and the gleam of his peerless sorrow saddened me.

  22. Then my tear awoke from its slumber,

    and her memory revisited me after long oblivion.

  23. And suddenly there I was—al-Mustafa—walking upon his hand;

    he moved like sleep’s phantom through a drowsy eye.

  24. I have no legs with which to walk, for I

    live only to listen to the echoes of my songs.

  25. As for me, our hopes, and what the nights have left

    me: sorrows upon sorrows.

  26. They said, “In Wadi al-Shita a kohl-eyed beauty appeared.”

    What is she to you? Turn away from her crimson cheek.

  27. Forgive me, my dear sisters: there still remain

    for her traces of love in the secret depths of my yearning.

Sol 5.6