لك ألحاظ كلال مراض — Alhamdoui

Your glances are weary and ailing,

yet my gaze is wearier still before them.

And I see your cheeks as fresh roses,

brightened by dew from my tears.

Your words are sweet, if only they were not marred

by repeated reproach looming in my ears.

Indeed, ʿAzzā, who deemed me too good

for anyone but herself—her abundance is little to me.

I remained in the shadows of your shade until

a shadow of deadly perils hung over me.

Surely worthier of me than you is a goal:

humiliation never dwells where that goal dwells.

Why should I stay, when my sword cuts keenly,

and my spear-point is sharp, never blunted,

and my splendor is like a meadow on rugged uplands,

made to smile by steady, pouring rain,

and my guide between my jaws overcomes

every stubborn, unbroken one, who then submits?

Am I to be plied, drunk on the wine of helplessness,

with a first draught, and then a second awaiting me?

If closeness to you is precious to me,

then the least prudence is more precious still.

Am I to sit as a companion to my wife?

Every companion abandons me because I am poor.

Beware! No lion goes against another lion,

driving him from his thicket while itself is feeble.

So leave off reproach, and let blame be,

and all your reproach is over my poverty.

He is a sword whose sheath is his two cloaks;

prudence unsheathes him when he is drawn.

The simʿ, when it sees him, has no doubt

that in the wastes he is a lean-rumped simʿ.

Between his two garments is a man of firm resolves

which even grim calamity shuns.

Saddles and desert wastes will not spurn me,

even if a home and dwelling place do.

So spare a poor man some of your reproach,

who never sees time's reversals lessen.

Indeed, the swift stride of pale camels bears fruits of sustenance,

which the desert-roaming, swift-moving traveler gathers.

Do not blunt the edge of my resolve with blame;

for I am a breaker of resolve and fate.

A true man is one whose guarded pasture is not grazed

in greed, ever, by one who would abase him.

One who, when calamity looms over him,

has patience towering over it.

He keeps company with the newborn night until

the night grows old, and he never tires.

And he finds that travel may jostle within him

a morsel of flesh, yet it does not turn foul.

His garments are tucked up beneath a night

whose robe lies ample and trailing over him.

I shall forgo sleep so that you may see me

while my host honors and reveres me.

For building honor is the ruin of Mahri camels,

and poverty's undoing is travel and encampment.