أتراها لكثرة العشاق — Al Mutanabbi

Do you suppose, because she has so many lovers,

she thinks tears an inborn feature of the eye-corners?

How can she pity, when she sees every eyelid

that has seen her—except her own—still weeping?

You are one of us: you have bewitched yourself, but

you were spared wasting sickness and longing.

You barred our visits; so today, if you visited,

wasting would stand in the way of an embrace.

Indeed, a glance that you prolonged, and we prolonged,

was deliberate on our part, yet a death by chance.

If distance, rather than your rejection, kept us from you,

swift trotting would have melted the fat camels' marrow.

And we would have journeyed, even if we arrived upon them

like our breaths clinging to the last sparks of life.

What passion for those eyes afflicts us—

whose lashes are the color of their pupils!

They shortened the span of nights gone by,

and thereby lengthened the nights remaining.

They rivaled the prince's bounty of wealth

with the sleeplessness they bestowed.

No mortal but Abu al-Asha'ir

has deservedly become these people's master.

He delivers the thrust that pierces the army

with terror and spilled blood:

a gaping wound, as though in the entrails [uncertain reading] of the man

who recounts it, so deeply does he bow his head.

He strikes skulls amid the dust, and does not fear

to drink what he himself serves.

He rides a long-legged mare, with room for a tall man

between her pasterns and her belly-wall.

No disbeliever in the messengers has seen her without

believing the account of al-Buraq's qualities.

His concern is with the wielders of spearheads, not with

the spearheads; their points surround him like a belt.

Penetrating in judgment, steadfast in composure, no

affair has the power to disturb him.

O sons of al-Harith ibn Luqman, may you never be absent

from the backs of thoroughbreds in battle.

They sent terror into the hearts of their enemies;

so battle began before the meeting.

And the blades, from what they have been trained to do, almost

unsheathe themselves toward necks.

And when horsemen fear the impact

of spears, these men fear fear itself.

Each brave warrior grows more beautiful in death,

like full moons whose fullness comes in their dark phase.

He makes his death his armor, if

nothing short of it can shield him from disgrace.

Generosity has hardened their sides;

so it is like water in thin sword-edges.

And lofty virtues that, if anyone else claims them,

make him bear the guilt of thieves.

O son of one who, whenever you appear, appears to me

absent in person, present in character.

If you disguised yourself in the charge before a people,

they would swear, on pain of divorce, that you are his son.

How can your forearm bear your hand, when the horizons

lie within it like a hand within the horizons?

Iron is of little use against you; so no one meets you

but one whose sword is made of hypocrisy.

Attachment to this air has planted in souls

the belief that death is bitter to taste.

And grief before the soul departs is weakness;

and grief cannot exist after parting.

How much wealth you have freed with the spear

that lay chained by its owners' miserliness!

And wealth in a base man's hand is ugly,

as ugly as a generous man in destitution.

My words about the sun of your deeds are not like the sun,

but like radiance within the sun.

The poet of glory has the poet of words as his companion;

each of us is a master of subtle meanings.

You have never ceased to hear praise, but

the neighing of steeds is not the braying of asses.

If only I had luck like this age's among the ages,

or its share among all allotted bounties!

You are in it, and every age

has wished for some of this from the Creator.