Sol 6.1

  1. Leave us to suffer the wasting afflictions; leave us.

    For our loved ones have departed, and we remain.

  2. Dark ships of separation bore them away

    to a resting place that sends none back through the years.

  3. And tidings of their deaths came, spurring my mount

    toward that pool where they come to drink.

  4. And I do not know, with my soul so afflicted,

    whether I journey left or journey right.

  5. To them I offer the whispered words deserved

    by their stations—a debt upon me, and a faith.

  6. Had vicissitudes allowed me to attain my wish,

    I would have joined them before they arrived.

  7. I shall weep and move others to weep; I can find

    no aid for my anguish but tears.

  8. I have never been accustomed to receiving mercy from fate,

    even if my soul wastes away in grief and moaning.

  9. Nor was my gentleness toward companions, as I sought to tame them,

    meant to win among them some easing of my torment.

  10. Nor was any obscure person contemptible to me; rather,

    the nights prolong my ordeal to bring me low.

  11. I have truly feared only death, in deference to one with power

    over it, and have certainly hated nothing else.

  12. And I feared it only because I regard what

    comes in accounts of resurrection as conjecture.

  13. O daughter of my sister's daughter, through what

    befell you, you renewed her dreadful memory in us.

  14. I am the maternal uncle, yet the father your kin

    meet, and the grandfather they find.

  15. They have known in me a loving fatherhood,

    though I have no daughters or sons among them.

  16. Death struck you in the cradle, unopposed,

    even had a barrier and fortresses stood around it.

  17. Your mother could discern for you, before death, no

    intercessor, nor could your father find a guarantor.

  18. In your earthly life, in two years, you attained what

    I attained in this life over many years.

  19. And in the two days of your illness you endured what swept away

    generations on earth and shattered centuries.

  20. You faced the stern reality before its time,

    and it was what you had never expected.

  21. A grave in Damanhur embraced you, while

    we see the people celebrating the leader.

  22. You exchanged its horizons and its places of play

    for soil in its wildernesses, a faithful guardian over you.

  23. Had they known that the entrusted charge was my lifeblood,

    the clamor of those cheering would have turned to silence.

  24. A trust from one whose pledges, if recalled to them,

    would melt hearts and eyes among them.

  25. If you have passed the night a stranger in the distant wilderness,

    I have passed it captive in the nearby neighborhood.

  26. Summer was the appointed time for my joys with you,

    and here I am spending it in sorrow for you.

  27. I am indeed excessive in my grief for you,

    even if those free of it deem it madness.

  28. My loss in the little girl is not, like her,

    little—even had the one lost been an unborn child.

  29. You engrossed my spacious heart, shutting out every other concern,

    and exchanged my concerns for other concerns.

  30. Nor did your namesake burden Qays with anguish

    in as many forms and kinds as you have laid upon me.

  31. Nor will family make me forget you, even for an hour,

    even if their offspring filled the cities.

  32. It was my wish that you might escape death

    and make me bear what you were bearing.

  33. Had the fates desired a ransom from me,

    I would never have begrudged my life.

  34. I open my eyes upon existence, yet they cannot see

    your cheek or brow within it.

  35. Can I witness the world and keep company with its people,

    while you are concealed beyond the unseen?

  36. And where is the smiling face that is my solace,

    even if I were tightly bound and stabbed?

  37. And where are the trilling songs whose sound was

    a clear message from noble revelation?

  38. Why does your brother, only three months old,

    wail with his parents' lament, in longing?

  39. Does he feel the agonizing separation,

    so that he will preserve his sister's memory and guard it?

  40. Were it not for him, I would keep nothing dear upon the earth,

    nor seek anything precious in existence.

Sol 6.1