أ أقحوانا أرته أم بردا — Al Sari Al Raffa

Did she show him chrysanthemums or hailstones—

a graceful maiden whose flank sways with supple grace?

She gazed at him with the eye of a doe lingering with her fawn,

languid-eyed, she saps endurance.

Had she felt at parting what he felt,

she would have lost her sleep as he lost his.

Do not reproach a lover for his longing,

even if, in love, he takes error for guidance.

For parting has always harbored a hidden bane

that tastes sweet at the watering-place he entered.

Had patience restrained [our tears?] on the day of parting,

we would have been spared reproach and accusations of folly.

Two lovers, unaccustomed to estrangement, who had not

exchanged their slumber for sleeplessness.

The might of separation humbled their fortitude,

and parting laid bare the grief within them.

We journeyed with our hopes to a king

who delights in the hopeful seeker who arrives.

Ever wakeful in judgment and resolve, whether

the eye of time wakes or sleeps.

Then the garden of the breeze appeared, smiling,

and the sea of generosity overflowed without cease.

Ibn Fahd stretched out a hand to the supplicants

that warded off time's forearm and hand.

Rain poured from him upon those who hoped in him;

it fulfilled all their hopes, yet never ran dry.

And rain, the lion, and the crescent moon when

it shines full—valor, succor, and bounty—

are fresh qualities of his that have made

time's creatures fresh and renewed.

And an ambition: whenever the ambitions of the

peoples bowed low, it soared with him on high.

No station of glory lay far away

without showing him its distance as an upward climb.

Forgetful of the bounty he bestows,

yet mindful of every kindness he has received.

I offered all the praise I could to one

who gives all he has in noble deeds.

Radiant, he is spurred to generosity by a nature

through which he restored bounty after it had vanished.

He unties what time knots, nor

do time's vicissitudes undo what he has tied.

May you be preserved for glory, O Salama, as long as

a camel-driver sings and chants for a journey.

You diligently fulfilled the duty of fasting,

so you alone carried away its reward.

And worry was driven from its haunts

by a festival that restored joy when it had fled.

So rejoice in a world whose beauties have appeared

through you, and which has given you a life of ease,

and in a praise-poem polished so that the

polishing left it neither slant nor crookedness.

It slew the envious with anguish

and left the enemies' faces dusky gray.