Sol 6.1

  1. Do you know and understand my excuse for lamenting,

    yet heap blame on me? You are now more unjust.

  2. You imagined I had turned from the principle on which

    I was raised—how wrong your imagining is!

  3. So you took me to task for reproach when it was due,

    and my reproach of the Turks is a turning toward them.

  4. Do the hardhearted pity my affliction,

    while you grow angry if you see me suffering?

  5. I had indeed hoped you would support my argument

    with one more eloquent than mine, O domineering one,

  6. and speak out, as I do, of what, were I to conceal it,

    I would conceal a blaze flaring in my heart.

  7. And Egypt's sons are in need of someone

    to express what they have kept within and interpret it,

  8. and raise their complaint to the Turks, mending

    the bonds of a covenant now being severed.

  9. By your life, were it not for my great fear for them,

    I would be carefree in my life, enjoying ease.

  10. And now it is time to reveal my anguish; perhaps I may

    find relief, or someone compassionate who will pity me.

  11. And had I not found their slumber to be the native lands' disease,

    I would not have spent the night among them, awake and bearing hardship.

  12. So do not deny my love for them if I censure them:

    for a lover may kill the beloved and destroy them.

  13. And after sin, a man's own self grows small in his eyes,

    so he exacts retribution upon it, resentful when he feels remorse.

  14. If I am not gladdened by a greeting from them,

    then they are not my loved ones, nor am I one of them.

  15. And if my tongue does not support them, may no

    swords or arrows of theirs strike home against their enemies.

Sol 6.1