Sol 6.1

  1. No pleasure remains for me from scattered rapture,

    Nor from dwellings on a valley's flank or a mountain slope.

  2. After fifty years, has his youthful folly returned?

    Oh, would that what returned of it today had not returned!

  3. And what do the eyes of wide-eyed women want of a man

    Over whose fresh days the twin renewers—night and day—have repeatedly passed?

  4. He revealed his secrets in yearning for a beautiful woman;

    And had he heeded his graying head, he would not have yearned.

  5. And a dwelling called down the eye's tears like rain,

    Of which nothing remained but the tethering stake and tent peg.

  6. And why do you weep for a dwelling with no companion in it

    Except red-legged ostriches among its dusky walls?

  7. Da‘hal craves every obscenity;

    If the baseness of Qahtan's sons perished, he would not perish.

  8. And I have rhymes that, when I set them down in one land,

    My devils fly with them to another land.

  9. No one has escaped their good or their evil.

    So beware their downpours, if you are anybody at all.

  10. Indeed, their thunderbolts struck al-Tirimmah

    In the gloom of oppression, amid owls and shrikes.

  11. And you deserve them more, if you are his heir;

    So go far away; your utmost is to escape, even at a distance.

  12. You lampoon Nizar with them, if you are his heir,

    And claim descent among people who weave striped cloaks.

  13. Indeed, when a man's scorpions creep forth,

    I make him drink my serpents' venom, and he does not return.

  14. Your Azd scorned me with contempt that rightly belongs to you;

    And who will add more, if we do not?

  15. Had you been cautious in what you cobble together,

    Your share of it would have been a cautious man's share.

  16. Had your reliance on it rested securely

    On noble deeds, we would have said: 'Ample ground to rely on.'

  17. You have indeed taken on a task you cannot accomplish,

    Without an ally, a patron, or a supporting arm.

  18. And you have shot at dawn's whiteness, thinking it

    Your belly's whiteness, out of baseness and spite.

  19. Do not threaten me with a people whose champion you are;

    And sit down, for you are a sleepyhead among the idlers.

  20. To God belongs Mu‘tasim bi-llah; obedience to him

    Is one of the decrees of the One, the Self-Sufficient.

  21. Endure it with the endurance of people whose souls

    Find no rest in blood money or retaliatory killing.

Sol 6.1