Sol 6.1

  1. Graces that lowered my gaze and kept it from reproach,

    and excellence whose description forbade me to sing of love.

  2. You see the majesty of kingship upon his brow,

    and read a line eloquent with awe.

  3. And one whose fathers and forefathers are the

    kings is not like a muṣawwaʿ [unclear] when he traces his ancestry.

  4. O overseer of Islam, are you looking

    toward a servant who praised you at length,

  5. toward a poet who cried out, while death had opened

    its mouth at him, “Sabur is with me!”—and death was overawed?

  6. Have the drunken companions not told my story,

    and have the riders not sung of me as they sped along?

  7. Was my fall not talked of in secluded chambers

    by maidens turning their henna-stained fingers?

  8. May the poets who gloated over my story be ransom

    for a youth rising as a star in poetry's sky,

  9. a youth whose compositions or recitations alone have traveled,

    though the conceited one among them rattled and clamored.

  10. Did they think my fall would shatter

    my rhymes, or set them howling at my mind [unclear reading], which refused to yield?

  11. My body weakened: gloat, then, or be gracious,

    but the keen sword between my jaws has not missed.

  12. How much poetry has traveled while its master stayed behind,

    and a saying was recorded from Satih and Duba.

  13. Ask death about me: how I blunted its edge,

    and wrested my life from it as it charged in anger.

  14. We drank, our drinking after we had come out

    among narcissi gray-haired before their youth.

  15. And the Tigris revealed, in al-Musandal, a shore

    shimmering, a tayyar-boat moving lightly, and a zabzab-boat.

  16. We had a night upon the brow of Time,

    like your resolve, for life was within it and flourished.

  17. Time relented toward it after having been angry,

    and did good in it after having done wrong.

  18. Oh, my joy, if only I had awakened unharmed!

    And oh, my shame, if my mount slipped or stumbled!

  19. If I did not run riot in the last stages of my drunkenness,

    there is no disgrace if a calamity leaped upon me.

  20. And patience with the hangover's good and ill,

    since I said to the cups, “Welcome, welcome!”

  21. I go out at evening, wine's hue staining my palm,

    and go out at dawn, a part [of me] stained with my blood.

  22. Then if—while wine's hue stains my palm—

    and I go out at dawn with a limb stained with my blood,

  23. then if the vizier's eye had seen a poet

    on a mount that God had disgraced as a mount,

  24. he would have seen revelry dead and wantonness laid out,

    fallen, and the body of joy tormented.

  25. My people's elders came early to me, heaping up the

    meddling, by my life, and the harm and astonishment.

  26. They tell me, “Repent; do not return to anything like it.”

    But far from it! Their counsel was wasted on me and failed.

  27. Many a time before this have I died of drunkenness,

    and returned—and the return was sweeter and more pleasant.

  28. So it is forever: you see me either dragging

    my hems in drunkenness, or broken and splinted.

  29. But noble men must shoulder my upkeep

    when a harsh turn of Time carries me down some path.

  30. When one whose companionship we had grown used to shunned us,

    and a year we had hoped in failed us and grew barren,

  31. we pawned, exchanged, and sold handkerchiefs,

    and jewelry and stored treasures dear to us.

  32. I saw my daughter had secured some of her jewelry,

    so I recited a love verse, pointedly alluding to her:

  33. “Women's anklets swing, yet I see

    no anklet on Ramla.” She said, “O father,

  34. you stripped the girls of their jewelry, leaving

    no bracelet, nor a gilded necklace upon a throat!”

  35. So I told her, “The vizier's shelter grants us

    a refuge where Time, when pleased with him, makes amends.

  36. When Sabur, the full moon of kingship, is rising,

    then I care not who else is absent.”

Sol 6.1