أؤنب الشوق فيهم وهو يضطرم — Al Sari Al Raffa

I rebuke my longing for them while it blazes,

and deem the eye's tears too few, though they are blood.

By God, what suns of theirs have set

at Ghurrab, and what full moons Idam has embraced!

Fair women, of whom the gleaming swords proclaim

that they are bliss, with vengeance barring the way.

Our gesture, in fear, offered them

a greeting returned by jujubes and red 'anam berries.

They are gazelles, and their dwelling is my sanctuary;

they are healing, yet their glance brings me sickness.

The lovers' drink from the sanctuary's people is thirst—

agonizing thirst; the sanctuary drinks steady rain from their eyelids.

Their departure has never ruled a dwelling

without that dwelling gaining command of the eye's tears.

May you be safe! How have the gazelles of Dhu Salam fared,

when Salam is the covert in which they settled?

There beauty and kindness spend the evening yoked together,

and at dawn, character and tents alike embody its meaning.

May a cloud shower you, gilded with lightning and clamorous

with thunder, darkening at times and smiling.

As though, with the south wind driving it,

it were a surging sea filling the expanse of the sky.

One of those at whose smile the earth says,

'This is the life by which living souls live.'

As though, when it turned away and ceased its rain,

it were the enemy's army retreating in defeat.

Their defenders returned with blackened cheeks,

as though embers had scorched their skin.

They fled, while Ibn Abd Allah's bright swords pursued them,

like birds terrified by a lightning cloud's blaze.

With charges and bold advance you quenched their fire,

which had previously blazed against Islam.

With the sword's edge you drove them from a land—

spacious, through which your raging flood surged.

Thus their might came to lie beyond the sea,

yet they are within reach of the bright swords, if you draw them.

You assailed them with spears; between them

and the spearpoints there is neither kinship nor covenant.

You reached the strongest-fortified and remotest among them,

so no defenses can shield them from your might.

Their ruler spent the night beset

by madness, fearing your ruinous descent upon him.

With letters you terrify his vitals, and to them he

submits, in fear of death and hope of peace.

He drinks no water without choking from fear,

nor dozes without a dream terrifying him.

God is your protector while the spears run wild,

and locks of hair borrow the bright swords' colors.

The dust is night, its darkness shutting out the gaze,

and keen blades throng like the sun's rim.

Through your valor, Islam has found protection,

while you find protection in God and the Indian sword.

You urge the spears onward, with death lurking within them;

they sometimes shatter polytheism, and are themselves shattered.

Marvel at him when he is summoned to battle

by a deaf one that is deaf to no summons.

As though, with lofty spears filling its arena,

it were al-Khatt's plantations, with thickets of spear-shafts.

So warfare is well ordered, and the spoils apportioned,

the faith is smiling, and polytheism is uprooted.

O you who ask me what Ali's character is,

look at gratitude, with blessings joined to it.

Praise that makes Zuhayr lower his gaze,

and bounty before which Harim hides himself.

He extends his hand in kindness, and lets it loose

with death; at times he bestows favor and takes vengeance.

Renowned like God's House, he is recognized

by Arabs and non-Arabs through the merits told of him.

When dawn appears, he is the rising sun,

and when night grows dark, he is the fire and the landmark.

His praise-poets borrow no virtue for him,

nor say of him anything but what they know.

He saw generosity as a weanling and craned his neck toward it,

while the best of them saw it upon reaching manhood.

The shade of his mercy spreads wide over those who hope in him,

though no kinship or blood tie joins them.

His favors reach everywhere when rain reaches a land;

what encompasses the whole world is generosity.

If we gain his steady rain, we do not care

whether rain is withheld or the steady showers perish.

He is rain and wealth whenever his raincloud pours,

and death and destitution whenever he girds on his sword.

He struck the Cross and the children of the Cross; never

were his keen swords sheathed until his foes lay as rotting remains.

With bright swords the scabbards do not recognize when sheathed,

and sleek steeds known to the hollows and hillocks.

Their bridle-straps are not removed on their return,

nor are the girths loosened from their middles.

As though they were foaled for war already saddled,

with bits fitted to their mouths.

O cutting sword of the faith! The faith has clung,

with both its hands, to a rope from you that never breaks.

I watch for your pardon, knowing it will be spread

over me by those radiant qualities and dispositions.

My departure was an offense without equal

in my eyes; yet what wise man commits no wrong?

A judgment went astray, a lapse through which my foot slipped;

judgment never strays without the foot slipping.

It was compulsion that removed choice; and would

a man of reason choose what ruins and disgraces him?

And how could a thirsty man avoid his watering-place

deliberately, when he goes there and it is cool and icy?

Pardon me! Were my heart split open to reveal its page,

fear and remorse would remain there to be read.

It has come to you like a necklace, not shaming the one who strung it

in beauty, yet shaming what they have said and composed.

Poetry is like a garden: this part parched, that part lush;

and like cutting blades: this one blunt, that one keen.

Or like noses: this one's lot is snubness,

which mars it, while that one's lot is a lofty bridge.