Sol 5.6

  1. Strut in coy coquetry, O moon—

    the gaze is not beguiled by you.

  2. Your supple figure is a bough upon a dune,

    bending when its fruit grows ripe.

  3. Your beauty is a fresh, untrodden garden,

    adorned with basil and blossoms.

  4. The loveliest flower is a cup of wine,

    its bubbles adorned with pearls.

  5. The pillar of dawn is your neck, while the

    necklace upon it is the radiant stars.

  6. Ah, what a joyous spectacle,

    so dazzling that thought is bewildered by it:

  7. a form whose beauties are perfected—

    it is neither sun nor moon.

  8. It is the mirror of souls; and so,

    wherever it turns, the images turn.

  9. Who will rescue me from the hands of a gazelle

    whose waist is wary of his ample haunches,

  10. with eyes whose coquetry is deep-black beauty,

    and glances whose magic is their dark-and-white contrast?

  11. His cheek is tender, yet his eye

    is armed with arrows whose wounds are hard to heal.

  12. Like my heart, his eyelid is forever

    cast down from hearing reproach.

  13. His limbs flow, for they are made of

    water—but his heart is stone.

  14. He rose, bending the bough of his stature,

    boasting over all the other boughs.

  15. Then we saw the rose scatter what

    bashfulness had strung upon his face.

  16. His cheek is paradise to the eye,

    yet to the grieving heart it is Saqar.

  17. Moses was not there when

    al-Khidr trailed his robe through it.

  18. Ah, what haughty pride in that gazelle!

    Aloof, incited against me by a band:

  19. my reproachers command him to shun me,

    envying me whenever they conspire.

  20. His tresses have left my heart

    blazing in the inferno of longing.

  21. Then they kindled my anguish, and it flared;

    it spares nothing and leaves nothing behind.

  22. If the reproachers knew, as they blamed me,

    that my infatuation was born of love for him, they would excuse me.

  23. O crescent moon, vanished from my sight,

    in whose wake sight itself has vanished,

  24. separation has rent my patience, so no

    substance of it remains to me, nor trace.

  25. Tell my beloved ones, those who journeyed away,

    to show mercy to the heart they took captive.

  26. They journeyed away with it and never relinquished it,

    whether they granted union or forsook me.

Sol 5.6