قد أظلتك يا أبا إسحاق — Al Sari Al Raffa

Already you are overshadowed, O Abu Ishaq,

by a raid of words and subtle meanings.

And the valiant one came to you, his gaze sidelong

toward it, and the viper with his downcast eyes.

Were a drop from Qutrubi to dry,

the traces of discord would be effaced after it.

So take a stronghold for your poetry, to shield

it against the incursions of renegade rebels.

Before the shimmer of iron, he pours

poison into its clear, shimmering water.

He once launched raids in the barren land,

then came to be upon the throne of Iraq.

And violating the sanctuary beneath the canopy

of kingship brings weakness upon the kings of that canopy.

I once was adorned with poetry's wealth;

then I decked myself in the poverty it brought.

O eyelid, change these tears of yours;

bereavement for a beloved is not mere parting.

Was it the morning of al-Kulab that destroyed my poetry,

so it passed away—or the evening of al-Tahlaq?

A raid not made with dark-shafted spears

when launched, nor with slender swords.

Its horsemen wheeled against me while seated—

may no thoroughbred backs ever bear them!

Kings' souls were bereaved, O Abu al-Hayja,

robbed of their most precious treasures:

of rhymes like gardens, where wandered

among their blossoms the waters of the rills;

and meanings you opened up, which became

a fragrance-enhancing blend for the musk of speech.

Marvels like swords, honed into beauty,

and a cupbearer gave them talent's luster to drink.

Radiant, they show you, in word and meaning,

the redness of jewelry against the whiteness of collarbones.

What a raid! In the thick of battle it parts

the doves from their neck-rings.

It brands the foremost horseman with shame,

and some acts of daring are an enduring shame.

If you saw poetry trembling before it,

amid that thunder and lightning,

and the hearts of words pounding in terror

beneath the twin folds of its fluttering banner,

and the swords of error slaughtering within it

the virgins of manuscript sheets and pages,

and delicate faces, their skin bloodied,

in the battlefield of thick-skinned faces,

you would sigh in pity for the cheeks—

the red ones among them—and the slender figures;

and the gardens that were relentlessly assailed

by a false rain-giver, a true scorcher;

and the stars constantly envied by the stars

of the sky for their radiance,

after they shone in the sky of high honors,

rising, and spreading across the horizons.

And you selected their jewelry, never passing beyond

the choicest throats and necks.

And you spent your youth upon it until

youth's cloak was about to grow threadbare.

So it is like wine, in clarity,

and splendor, fragrance, and flavor.

Speech that puts spring to shame when

clouds untie the girdle's knot over it.

Arabic, with the scents of wormwood and yarrow

rising from it, and of shath and tubbaq.

Flowing from the ravines of Wajra, dwelling

between its valley bends and the stony tracts.

For it has all you wish of mighty camel-stallions' bellowing,

and all you wish of she-camels' yearning cries.

O crescent moon of letters, O son of Hilal,

may God avert from you the calamity of the moon's darkening.

You are the one for whom high honors come easily,

though for other people they are hard to climb.

A commodity, with no talisman for one who seeks it;

a serpent, with no charmer for one who grapples with it.

He apportioned sustenance among us through his gifts,

so we called him the apportioner of livelihoods.

I shall offer you, from glory's servants,

slave girls who disdain the shame of running away.

Each stamped with your name; plain to see

is her brand upon foreheads and inner eye-corners.

Sincere in affection; truthful about them

are the tongues of praise; their bridal dowers are complete.

Indeed, my enemies and I are lifelong drinking companions,

giving one another death to drink from a brimming cup.

If our bloods met in a single place,

they would part from it after that meeting.

And these are our old blood-feuds; they do not release

our bowstrings from the arrow-nocks.

There is nothing in them but sword-blows to necks,

and spear-thrusts at throats and eyes.

Or if you see otherwise than you saw, I am

forgiving toward a deceitful, empty boaster.

He counterfeited poetry and youth, becoming

worn of face and dark of character.

He schemed against me, bent on drowning me; many a drowning man

has plunged, for mischief, into drowning's abyss.

And when the enemy comes openly, revealing

his rancor, or creeps in the darkness of hypocrisy,

then I am the fury in my enemies' breasts,

and the choking bone lodged in their throats.