Sol 6.1

  1. I voiced a proud man's complaint of anguish and grief,

    but found among you neither a heart nor an ear.

  2. I am the wounded one, yet I do not requite her who wounded me;

    I am the stabbed one, yet I do not requite him who stabbed me.

  3. I am torn by hopes there, in

    the bondage of nights, and by pains that grow here.

  4. Among you I endured a stranger's anguish, yet never

    left my family or emigrated from my homeland.

  5. I lived there as a bearer of glad tidings and a warner—so who

    made water palatable for me, or lowered a branch for me?

  6. I have gone far from its Nile's cool, pure water,

    and spent the night gulping heated water from Evian.

  7. Can my entrails keep me going on medicines

    after they have become unable to digest milk?

  8. Sickness now wrestles with me over each step; how often

    in health I wrestled with fate and time!

  9. If my soul could be healed of what I have come to bear

    of anguish for Egypt by a physician, he would heal my body.

  10. I reproached you, yet in me you have your intercessor;

    one who knows no rancor has the greatest right to reproach.

  11. I visit you and console you, and you are borne

    within my breast, though I—I am the captive, the ailing one.

  12. Nor have I suffered injustice from enemies

    as I have from loved ones, sorely tried.

  13. Nor have I wept for my family ties and my health

    as I wept in sorrow over your covenant.

  14. My life nearly went to waste among you,

    yet my faith neither faltered nor weakened.

  15. Where is the remedy, that I might recover for you

    my resolve and witness a fair day among you?

  16. Life is a ransom for the valley's freedom—a ransom!

    And I regard that price as little.

  17. Loosen my bonds; I shall journey away from you to a distance

    that has exhausted swift mounts in the cities, and ships.

  18. In cities I endured what my conscience could not bear;

    whoever finds rest in villages does not dwell in cities.

  19. Is there a way for me, after cities, to the desert wastes

    someday? For my breast has tired of their fetid air.

  20. A man like me is free and faithful, despite

    his frailties, to whoever entrusted him with care and trusted him.

  21. The adversary has been summoned to decisive judgment tomorrow

    by one who tried and tested both caller and called.

  22. Fear your own selves before you repel

    that powerful, formidable, harsh intruder.

  23. I see that the wrathful one whose blows went astray

    against you has returned to erase what he decreed and perpetrated.

  24. Oh, how welcome is reconciliation between the two sides, as

    heaven ordains and approves it for him and for us!

  25. Today she receives from him all that was required

    of him by Egypt and desired—not merely what he permitted.

  26. So he will not rise against her after she has grown calm,

    nor will she rise against him after he has grown calm.

  27. Tomorrow Egypt's people will uphold and guarantee a right

    for whoever upheld a right for them, and whoever guaranteed it.

  28. Leave the ministry to the task that surrounds it;

    for what she and he have built belongs to the hoped-for concord.

  29. Indeed, what your conjectures differed over

    in that secret has now satisfied you openly.

  30. Egypt's constitution is a newborn among you; take

    from peace a cradle and a sheltering embrace for it.

  31. A promise from time, which it has fulfilled for Egypt,

    and another has already appeared to you and drawn near.

  32. And we do not want the throne's share diminished,

    nor do we want the people's share debased.

  33. And the Nile—its Creator made it flow in its valley;

    if He wills, He sets it free or stores it away.

  34. We have enough from its portions, and it is His to

    let a portion of it water the Levant and Yemen.

  35. Nor does He divert it to a place not its own—

    He who measured it out as rainstorms, and He who weighed it.

Sol 6.1