1. The great scholar of Rum, judge of the two armies there—

    whose judgment in legal cases accords with Fate—

  2. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Akhizade, whose virtues are recited

    among us like Qur’anic verses and suras;

  3. Muhammad in name, auspicious in character;

    from the radiant lines of his face rises the moon.

  4. By God, what passages upon the page! You would take them,

    amid the whiteness, for the eye’s black pupil and its very sight;

  5. or for gardens clothed by night-traveling clouds

    in brocade mantles—or adorned by ink;

  6. like stars that have risen by night above

    the river of the Milky Way, or like a flower-filled meadow.

  7. They wish that Orion, enamored of them, would

    loosen her belt among them, though she thereby risked peril.

  8. It is as though the pearls upon beauties’ ruby fingers

    had been set along its margins where the fingernails lie.

Sol 6.1