Sol 6.1

  1. We shed our tears for the fortieth-day remembrance,

    and had weeping availed, we would have wept blood for it.

  2. I had hoped the year's festive season would be a reunion

    for my family; instead, that season's gathering was one of mourning.

  3. Oh, would that we were scattered apart across the earth,

    and that you were alive upon it, blessed with ease.

  4. Is there an uncle like me, who lived among his brother's sons,

    more devoted to them than their parents, and more compassionate?

  5. I alone cared for those among them whom I had adopted;

    so I was their foremost father, and I was their teacher.

  6. No mother's grief for a son, nor any father's,

    is greater than my grief for you, or more immense.

  7. Would that what struck you down in the bloom of youth

    had carried off your uncle instead, mature in years, old and broken down.

  8. Thirty years, or thirty hours—

    you took from life the share decreed for you.

  9. The brother went far from his two brothers and did not return,

    and I was not used to his being away from them for two days.

  10. It pains me today that you are out,

    and that you have not come in to greet me.

  11. Your life among us—its camel-drivers hastened it onward;

    and how precious a life it was, and how noble!

  12. Were it not for my complaint about hearing and sight,

    and my distress over it, I would have been denied speech.

  13. While others hope for health and safety,

    I fear that I might become healthy and sound.

  14. And if sorrows wished to leave me, I would seek them,

    as though I had become enamored of sorrows.

  15. Had I been free to choose, at life's limit I would have been

    the one to prolong and complete your life out of my own.

  16. I ask nothing about war or peace,

    nor about the people's position in either, now that you are gone.

  17. It would do me no good, after losing one

    of my family, to find kingship as a prize for myself.

Sol 6.1