سقى أيام رامة بل سقاها — Mihyar Al Daylami

May rain water the days of Rāma—rather, water Rāma itself,

deep-dug rain that strikes sparks from its pebbles.

Dark, as though the dun camels within it

wore patchwork coverings to whoever saw them.

It stoops low, enticing the awkward woman until

she gives it a place and wipes it with her hands.

When its cloud is drawn tight, it turns

Najd’s east wind loose from its bonds.

The valley of Ushayy flows with its water

and fills the acacias above Kāẓima.

As though its sky grew tender and poured

its twin torrents upon the orphaned earth.

When she glimpses its lightning as swords

about to be sheathed, it retreats and draws them again.

My soul commands me to follow the lightning,

but when my eye follows it, my soul forbids it.

Before it I had seen no red whose outcome was green,

nor a blow that made its mark so far away.

It reminds me—longing has its feast—

of Umm Saʿda’s teeth or the dark sweetness of her lips.

Ah, for the eye on the day of ʿUkāẓ:

one glance brightened it, then became its mote.

You see decay play earnestly with the dwelling,

while its weeping plays there, or grows earnest.

How many a captive heart at Liwā al-Shaqīqa,

if it could speak, would say, ‘Ah!’

And how many a sufferer whose complaint, if heard

by Mount Abān, would melt its solid rock.

And a sweet-scented woman at dawn: her braids shed

fragrance like ben and musk, as do her two veils.

When her rival wives could find no fault in her,

her faultfinders consoled themselves with pretexts.

Parting robbed her of her wits, and she wandered

like a doe seeking her lost fawn.

She leans upon the saddle, inclining toward mine,

whispering to me and making me understand her love.

In that whispering I kiss her upper breast;

if only her ear could become her mouth for me.

O neighbors of the protected land, who will guide a night traveler

who came seeking his way among you to her young man?

When, on the day of separation, you were

his soul’s death, you were also its desire.

I seek someone besides you to lift its affliction,

though the one who can heal it caused the wound.

I lay awake, while a friend slept instead of aiding my eyes—

one who once shared in their sleep.

I tug him unwillingly toward help;

but who can command reluctant affection?

Before you, I bound my hand to a patron

to mend it; he fastened it, then picked at it.

He struck my back and said, ‘Beware ahead,’

so arrows came at me unseen.

When I shook his hand, I closed my palm

on a hand whose fingers were knives.

And a flash seemed to shine among maidens,

its radiance from my face dazzling their eyes.

When it rained upon a land, its arak trees did not green,

nor did its soil grow fertile.

The traces of calamity grew in my heart

and spread to my locks until they overtook them.

For a time, the years kept gray hair from them;

then, tiring of their company, cast it upon them.

They had been a night concealing my faults,

but their daylight showed the seeker where I was.

When an experienced man considers, through his years,

their changes, he knows their end.

A person’s life is breaths that run out,

however long, and numbers that reach their limit.

I see all days as one day, with their names

and their ornaments only borrowed for them.

And young men entered the darkness of a black night

with me, and I was their guide through it.

At their peril I gave them a life

ready to answer the first who called.

They guessed which of them was their brother

in the great trial, and knew no one else but him.

For a disheveled traveler I spread out the open wastes

and the stages of a road he had already crossed.

Whenever he thought evening would find him near a dwelling,

I said settling there was shame, and he passed it by.

Whoever makes eminence his need

and clothes himself in patience fulfills it.

I swear by them, blowing through their nostrils

with a roar, or rubbing from the pain of their feet.

They turn deep-set eyes toward the sun,

like wells whose thirst might be quenched by water.

They rattle the pebbles in the dark night

as birds chatter when they reach water early.

Day after day they long for grass,

but have no pasture except what is in their bellies.

Lean as curved bows,

while the men on their backs are like arrows.

Everyone vows an offering upon seeing them

descending toward Mecca or Minā.

Clouds have grown weary trying to keep up with the hands

of the sons of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, yet cannot overtake them.

Noble people: their clan upheld its house

with the honor of its family and guarded its domain.

Their virtues surpassed others even in infancy,

and they held sway while still young.

For them, high honors gave birth to worthy sons;

among them those honors found their father.

Noble birds, free in the open reaches,

when the accidents of lineage drive others away.

You would think bright stars had been shaped into faces

when they bare their noses and foreheads.

Sons of hard years: when famine makes hospitality lean,

they fatten its provisions through generosity.

They keep a fire on the height of the guest houses—

may God gladden the eyes of whoever sees it.

When stout firewood fails it,

its tender before dawn rekindles it.

It shines, as if, while night is dark,

its embers gain light from their foreheads.

Beside it sits a young man of theirs, companion to its glory,

warming himself when the cold grows sharp.

His hope that a guest will come to it

keeps sleep from his eyes.

When spring fattens the great-humped she-camel

and her sides swell around her ribs,

and she rises above the herd in her stature,

as though a Roman mason had built her flanks,

he thinks his guests have a better claim

to humble his prized camel and tear down her hump.

He rises and gives the Indian blade its slaughter,

cutting her lower parts to feed them the finest.

Her companions cry out in longing, and her shepherd grieves,

but their cries do not turn him back.

She becomes divided among the guests, each eater

drawing near a piece he has claimed.

If he fears the pot will delay them,

he hastens to roast the meat.

He passes the night pleasing a soul which, even if

wealth passed it by, would be rich in itself.

Their roots grew in the house of Kisrā

toward a fruitful branch heavy with sweet yield.

You see among them reputations washed clean,

offspring unstained by the blades they carry.

When you see them in combat, you would think

their spear shafts had drawn blades on their tips.

They guarded the paths of honor by speech and blows,

with words and swords drawn from their sheaths.

Each young man pursuing his two needs

tracks them like a wolf following sheep.

When the enemies’ locks are exposed before him,

bowed to his sharp sword, he cleaves them.

As their stock grew tall and spread,

their hills branched from firm mountains.

In Muḥammad, but for his father, they would see

the elders of glory following their young man.

He came after them in leading glory,

and sealed their line as though he had begun it.

A youth who ruled them while still young, he fulfilled

the promise they had fulfilled when they ruled others.

He has original forms of generosity; if we saw them

in someone before him, we would say he copied them.

I have never seen his like: a smooth, steep mountain

that is shaken and yields wealth and standing.

Nor have I seen glory whose person I can face,

or generosity with which I can speak face to face.

It is as though God gave him the choice and shaped

his fine qualities just as he wished them.

Abū Saʿd, I struck at fire with flints that yielded nothing;

when your firestick was opened for me, it gave flame.

I called on you when the road bore a snake

smooth to the touch but rough in its nature.

Its course was like a swift swimmer’s course

through the deep sea of Awāl when its sailors set sail.

It spat venom from a hollow head, imagined as

the millstone of death, with its head the turning stone.

As though a Yemeni had embroidered with his hands

the patterned cloth of his cloak across its back.

Your help stayed beside me,

and your judgment sheltered me until it charmed the snake.

How many favors you gave when strength in my hands was weak—

a hand whose power was doubled in my keeping.

Whenever I rise to thank such a favor, it bends back,

and its later gifts distract me from its first.

I seek refuge for your eminence from the sting of an envious eye

that, if glory saw it, would put it out.

May you never lack virtues for which, if the envious man

were asked to ransom them, he would give himself.

May high honor remain protected through you,

its heart defended and its borders guarded.

May the Mihragān and every feast pass

amid your blessings and gain from your bounty.

The camels of high distinction settle among you

and lay down their staffs in your midst.

You drove away from me the days, their white

claws stripped of sharp points.

Your praise has spared me other men

whose bynames I see eclipsed by your names.

The mean men of the realm, if the pools of livelihood

were returned to them, would not wet a lip.

Through you I became known; why should my soul stoop

when you have given it all it needs?

So take these verses as recompense, sent forth

upon people’s lips to delight whoever recites them.

When they knock at an envious ear,

they deafen it; when they strike a face, they mar it.

How many have tried to find fault with them,

aiming at the mother of the stars without guarding himself.

He sought to lower them and fell, accursed,

by their power like his devil, while faint Suhā escaped.

He challenged himself over them and failed;

he called their power beyond him mere folly.

Blame your foot for trailing my endeavor:

only its own steps have pierced it.

What fault is mine, when my steeds are sound,

if you are the sore-backed one they must carry?

Ears made foul by ignorance rejected my earrings

and became pebbles rattling in their gullets.