أبى الله إلا أن يكون لك الفضل — Al Tutili

God has willed that excellence should be yours,

and that word and deed should boast of your name;

and that whenever people discuss some noble distinction

they count it one for which you are fit;

and that high aspirations should rest their hopes on you

whenever a serious matter, or a jest, troubles them;

and that you should fill the days with generosity and aid,

and with what neither binding nor unbinding lacks.

He strengthened a sword that scarcely turns its flank

toward war without death becoming its shadow.

The sun is jealous of every eye that looks at it,

so it dazzles that eye away, though its blade is polished.

The sheath almost flows from the moisture of its eyelid,

while fire and abundant kindling lie along its two edges.

Wherever you see it, you see the whole sheath,

even when no battle or killing has drawn it.

Forbearance can be understood from each of its movements,

though folly may be what stirs its sides.

Many a madness whose victim cannot be cured

has learned from it how reason may be acquired.

Mighty lions shrink from its edges,

though it has left marks on them as an ant would.

These are verbal riddles with which idle time

has entangled our minds, or kept the rhymes busy.

Among bright blades, only what its edge has claimed

of blood is lawful for swords, and yet unlawful.

It bears the wasting that lovers bear in their bodies,

though no coyness or charm has made it lovesick.

In battle it has aims where necklace and anklet lie,

though neither necklace nor anklet is its aim.

A thing may seek another's help through a bond of contact,

with neither kinship nor likeness drawing it near.

It has private meetings with souls, though nights descend

upon them and the crowd gathers between them.

It is as though what it misses lies off to one side,

but only on condition that it yield no pleasure or sweetness.

It has a sudden rush, without delay or weariness,

to a place no excuse or reproach has reached before it.

And a brown, broad-jointed shaft is like

a viper when it quivers, or when a viper attacks it.

And one enslaved by appetite, allied with composure,

goes toward it whenever the grass grows.

Deaf, it is summoned by fresh hopes

and falters; death summons it, and it does not falter.

Death ran through its two sides, coming and going,

as water once ran through them before.

It bent when its growing places became the kidneys,

as it once bent when it grew from sand.

Its fruit grew sweet while the banner weighed it down,

as you knew it when thick leaves adorned it.

Yet it was bitter when it swayed in fertile ground;

what would you think of it when drought has worn it down?

We had known transplanting to wither it before;

beware of it now, when transplanting has not withered it.

I have seen nothing like it that stretches so far

toward death, except the arrows that vie with it.

When its branch and stock raised it,

it resembled him; and if it did not, the credit is its own.

Death has causes that a young man fears,

and the most cunning are those guile cannot ward off.

Death is feared in a staff or an iron weapon,

while wide eyes weaken what they turn upon.

And a garden on rugged ground: between its fragrant breeze

and the folds of the heart lies an easy passage.

Messages bearing the love between sweethearts travel from it,

messages, or messengers, that do not go astray.

A fragrance passed from hand to hand by evenings and mornings;

upon its two surfaces hopes flourish and fall ill.

It goes with the wind whenever the wind blows for it; when it stills,

it and the dew linger bewildered in its flower cups.

It is as if pure wine spent the night giving it a second draught,

so a trace of fragrance in it is seldom absent.

How fine the cup whose mention they raised

as solace for a heart that finds neither help nor forgetfulness.

It is the thing I praise, though I know nothing of it

except that I have no doubt it is potent.

َ

They said, ‘It carries the beloved's scent; bring it,’

even if neither song nor food makes it go down.

Before what it claimed, I thought wine

would disdain to meet the bees.

Was it wine that watered its blossoms, or a cloud?

When it breathes fragrance, I am sure rain will pour.

Among clouds heavy as hills until their weight bows them,

even when a weightless need carries them on.

If war is conceived by it or by its like,

it will bear no offspring kind to life's sweetness.

It traveled at night, broad of flank and high of crest,

drooping on its night journey, following or being followed.

Lightning flashing along its sides seemed

lamps being lit or swords drawn from their sheaths.

Thunder guffawed within it on every side,

as mature camels bellow in a herd.

It cried out over the place of tamarisks without gentleness;

does it know what the tamarisks have suffered?

It leaned once across the slopes of Lebanon,

and a steady rain, all downpour, poured upon them.

So it went on until every open stretch there

was a pool, and every rise was mud;

until, on its roads, the falcon with beating wings met

the hungry lion of the thicket, the flock, and the herd;

until the morning sun appeared, as though it were

your face—I do not exaggerate, though I cannot help praising.

Its flowers streamed over the garden on rugged ground

with the water, like passion overtaken by union;

like my verse when it meets your eager stir toward giving.

Without those two, high honor would not be joined together.

Shine, O Lamp of the Faith, son of its lamp,

when those paths and roads grow hard to distinguish.

Say what the age was like when you were ailing,

though distinction and nobility shone within it.

A sheath is not adorned by the beauty of its ornaments

on the day of battle until its blade adorns it.

You complained, and every land with all its people

began to sway, as though even mountains had people.

The heavens ceased their circling,

as if their form matched your long nights.

Letters grew desolate, as though, when Salma departed,

the baggage and the burdens went with her.

The world and all its people were clothed

in wasting: some tasted it, and all endured it.

No sky remained but one black and dark,

no land but one desolate and barren.

The magic of wide eyes was annulled after

a time when all other magic was powerless beside it.

My creditor wished his case would become clear,

and treated me fairly, though he used to enjoy delay.

He struck me with a glance at youth's death,

and at days before it when affections still gleamed.

Am I envied while the world withholds its bounty

from me, when all its ways have been corrupt?

I wear away my youth under time's rule and turns,

while the lizard does not cast off its own young vigor.

It is a final decree of the days; I resented it,

yet its being final did not restrain me.

My familiar spirit turned away, with my right and my wrong,

as though no bond or pledge had drawn him near.

I pursued pleasures only with regret

that their first draught would have no second.

And I took up poetry only to sing

your name, by which distraction is cured or soothed.

Has news reached him that glad tidings are near

of your recovery, clearing away some of my hopes?

And that the face of favor has drawn near, after

draughts, or a whole bucket, of my cares troubled it?

And that I have begun my life anew—here I am,

newborn, though youth thinks me an old man;

and that, if I wished, I could reclaim my wandering ways

with every traveler whom no child makes turn aside,

on gaunt, worn mounts whose riders' souls

have struggled with distance, borne by mount and saddle,

toward the son of Abu Marwan, until he gave them shelter:

a young man neither wayward nor heedless.

May the land you do not inhabit be laid waste,

even if generosity and giving should grow there.