Sol 6.1

  1. Call at Yalbugha's clock whenever

    Cares rise within you, and turn toward its window.

  2. And behold a garden, a sky of emerald:

    The stars of blossoms have risen from its spheres.

  3. A stream flows through it like the Milky Way,

    Its pebbles like pearls upon its strings.

  4. The seasonal rains have woven for it, from robes of splendor,

    A brocade the eye is baffled to comprehend.

  5. And the breeze settled in its two courts, as did

    Birds prolonging their plaintive song above its arak trees.

  6. Among them, a blackbird like a monk in a church,

    Who has chanted the Gospel amid its deep darkness,

  7. And a turtledove's song and a dove's cooing,

    And the refrain of a songbird enamored of its nets,

  8. And the murmur of a river whose water is silver;

    The gold of late afternoon flowed through its woven ripples.

  9. It has a bank: if its shimmering water were seen

    By al-Ubulla's river, that river would sink amid its hillocks.

  10. Its reaches were filled with the onrush of its might,

    Until they settled, through it, at its holding place.

  11. There they are served coffee in mutual friendship,

    Like aloeswood from al-Shihr after its grinding,

  12. From the hand of a languid-eyed one who, whenever he gazes,

    Captures the heart, so it lies within his snares.

  13. So let the herd of your gaze graze upon him; then do not drive it

    From its watering place, and beware of restraining it.

  14. For how often I dispelled cares there, in the company of

    A shaykh, with the sciences of sacred law at his command.

  15. He lent the days a radiance

    And freshness; both lay buried soon after his death.

  16. So may the Throne water, for him, the earth that hid

    Those sciences, with the unceasing rain of its Simak star.

  17. And may the Lord's greetings, each evening,

    Be offered to him by the hands of His angels.

Sol 6.1