Sol 6.1

  1. Lo, this is Najd—make my mount kneel, you two,

    so that my tears may water ʿAlwa's dwellings there,

  2. and I may ask after my heart, for there I lost it,

    the evening the travelers departed with my lifeblood.

  3. Dwellings of my rapture and the abode of my abandon,

    and the spring abode of my intimacy, and the home of my solitude;

  4. and an abode where the beloved was my drinking companion,

    and from his nearness came my spirit, my wine, and my repose.

  5. May God water a time that held a covenant, for then

    I cast my robe of honor to the lord of wantonness;

  6. and in it the one I love gave me wine to drink,

    so my intoxication from it lasts until the day of union.

  7. And in it he pledged to me to abandon his abandonment,

    and became my surety for forgetting my forgetfulness.

  8. So I went with him—rather, he bore me away—and it wavered:

    my state, through him, between one who effaces and one who affirms.

  9. So here I am, swaying my flanks, strutting

    in my mantle, and the one I love is my wine and my presence.

  10. I lend unmixed wine the intoxication of my graces,

    and offer the bān trees of the sanctuary the beauty of my swaying gait.

  11. To the right, this way, O my reproacher—away from reproaching me!

    And if you wish, head leftward, away from me, with your reproach.

  12. For your brother today is not the one you once knew,

    nor is this love that love—so consider carefully.

Sol 6.1