Sol 5.6

  1. What have I to do with the days? Woe for their vicissitudes—

    forever eyeing me with a hostile gaze.

  2. Alas! Time has attained its desire

    at my expense, while I have failed to attain my own.

  3. No helper to hope for, nor any fellow sufferer

    to whom we might lament the fire within our hearts.

  4. Ask poetry’s tested exemplars about me: have they ever seen,

    when striking the fire of understanding, a fire-steel like mine?

  5. No arena of eloquence was left but already

    my steeds had outstripped its swiftest racers on their way to you.

  6. How splendid is Khafāja, whom you have brought forth

    from the curtained chamber of your thought, adorned in the jewels of song!

  7. A share of exquisite verse has won for me

    the fortune of the noble and the rank of the glorious.

Sol 5.6