Sol 6.1

  1. O master of my bondage, do not reproach a lover overcome by longing.

    For your beauty, O my heart's desire, has taken minds captive.

  2. And if my sin is the excess of my love, then my obedience

    to your desire is an intercessor for me if I die a sinner.

  3. And suppose that beauty is veiled from me:

    has not the east wind's breeze drifted by with its fragrance?

  4. I would give my life for a beloved whose flank drunkenness set swaying;

    so he swayed like a bough whose equal the hills had never seen.

  5. From his black eyelids he unsheathes a white blade

    that spilled the blood of all lovers and never failed to cut.

  6. His cheek revealed to me a cup of wine; and it was only

    through the beauty of the pearls in his honey-sweet, dusky lips that he endeared himself.

  7. I hid myself behind ailments on his account; then, when he appeared,

    I became visible, as dust motes may appear in sunlight.

  8. And he endowed me with beauty—no wonder, for

    every lovely one has gained their beauty from him alone.

  9. And I am indeed that love-stricken lover who

    has never yearned for any but that one of absolute beauty.

  10. A lightning flash at al-Abraq al-Fard makes him sway,

    and in Nuʿman, news from ʿAlwah awakens his longing.

  11. If you seek to reveal what is kept guarded in his secret,

    then speak in that encampment of that tent.

Sol 6.1