Sol 6.1

  1. Have you not seen beauty's face, the clearest of the clear?

    It appeared, and is the greatest exposer of the lights.

  2. Nor is there any free being apart from it, save its own essence.

    Nor is any withholder before it other than a giver.

  3. If the eyes give you their own eyes,

    Healthy maidens with languid eyes take you captive.

  4. And if meanings annihilate you and you become them,

    You behold the dwellings, their breasts peopled.

  5. So behold the dense substance of existence, without disparaging it;

    You will find a face of beauty, radiant with perfections.

  6. What, then, are the great trees, bent by a predawn east wind

    That wept dew for fear of the opposing south wind,

  7. While every eloquent singer repeated its melody among them,

    From among the gray doves, from a meaning that sings and mourns,

  8. And its light kindled lightning's flash among them,

    So it faced the darkness with lamps from its blossoms?

  9. Oh, the beauty of a face from a center's small enclosures!

    Sorrow reviled them, yet with the very essence of praise.

  10. That one took shape within their forms—the one

    For whom limitation and absoluteness are a beholder's station.

  11. So if the ignorant one's eye erred and beheld

    Discord, it was within the very essence of sincere accord.

  12. Yet the ignorant one's eye did not err; indeed, it

    Is surely truthful in every lie—so forgive.

  13. For pure existence has brought forth no innovation,

    Nor does anything other than it bring novelty or good.

  14. It is the sea, with neither surface nor shore;

    So within it are flyers, walkers, and swimmers.

  15. Its water was mingled, and its own ships brought to a halt,

    By secrets whose concealment every revealer lays bare.

  16. Virgins whose father was their mother's object of action;

    Thus analogical reasoning brings no clarity concerning them.

  17. O you casting those snares as a hunter,

    They are the quarry; cast them—their casting has no caster.

  18. And do not lament abandonment by a beloved who maintains union;

    He became unrecognizable when you called him by an enemy's name.

  19. And if you have a cold, it is not fitting

    For you to say, 'Musk gives off no fragrance.'

Sol 6.1