Sol 6.1

  1. My eye saw firelight at nightfall.

    From its glow came the fragrance of Indian aloeswood and laurel.

  2. She kindled her hearth amid fragrance,

    So it shone with the gleam of a bracelet-bearing hand.

  3. Mayy, I am held in pledge to you,

    Without deceiving myself or disputing it.

  4. Convey to al-Nuʿmān a message from me,

    That my imprisonment and waiting have grown long.

  5. Were my throat choking on anything other than water,

    Like one choking, I would find relief in water.

  6. Would that I knew about an interloper who fabricates lies,

    Wherever he reaches into my night and day.

  7. As I sit, my soul is oppressed by its grief,

    And my imprisonment and confinement were unlawful.

  8. Because of a favor your forebear nurtured,

    And because I was close to you and kin by marriage;

  9. Because God has favored you

    Above all who gird their loins with a waistcloth.

  10. We were before you, as you well know,

    The pillars of the tent and the stakes of its ropes.

  11. We give generously when you ask us for gifts,

    And defend you with mighty hands.

  12. And your father was a man not hated for it,

    The day the unfortunate man among us was subjected to humiliation.

  13. And my enemies gloated; it pleased them

    That I was hidden away from them in bondage

  14. To a man who never knew a failing on my part,

    If misfortunes ever made him stumble.

  15. Yet if my fortune's goodness has departed,

    And its currents have flowed with evil for me,

  16. Surely, often I have dallied with a tender, budding-breasted maiden,

    Who fills the eye, chaste and far from lewdness.

  17. Many a time I have taken delight in her,

    And made the day seem short in my house of revelry,

  18. With singing to which the old man listens,

    And talk like pure white honey drawn from the comb.

  19. So we satisfied our desire for pleasure,

    And a man's life is like a thing on loan.

  20. Sodden-feathered, it descended at daybreak

    From the heights of a lofty crag, hard to climb.

Sol 6.1