عدوك مذموم بكل لسان — Al Mutanabbi

Your enemy is condemned by every tongue,

even if the sun and moon were among your enemies.

And God has a secret in your exalted rank; indeed,

your foes' talk is only a kind of delirium.

Do your enemies seek, after what they have seen,

an established proof or a clear explanation?

They have seen everyone who plans treachery against you afflicted

by life's betrayal or by time's treachery.

Against Shabib's will, the sword left his hand,

though the two had kept company despite their differences.

As though people's necks had said to his sword:

'Your companion is of Qays, and you are Yemeni.'

If he be a man who has gone his way,

then death is the end of all that lives.

And he was nothing but fire in every place,

raising dust instead of smoke.

Thus he attained a life his enemy desired,

and a death that makes death alluring to every coward.

He warded off the blows of spear-points with his spear,

and did not fear the fall of the Pleiades and Aldebaran.

And he did not know that death was above his head,

with a wing lent to it, skilled in flight.

And he had slain his peers until you slew him

with the weakest opponent, in the lowliest place.

Death came to him along a path hidden

from every ear and eye around him.

And had it taken the paths of weapons, he would have repelled it

with the reach of his right arm and the breadth of his heart.

Fate singled him out among his companions,

while he trusted in his times and felt secure.

And can a vast army help by gathering

around one granted neither victory nor aid?

Before night's rest, he paid for his crime with his own life,

and did not pay for it with a vast herd of camels.

Does a sane man's hand hold what you have bestowed on him,

yet grasp a rein in ingratitude for it?

And does he ride the honor upon which you have mounted him,

yet ride a horse's back in rebellion?

Kindness bent back his hand until it seemed,

once clenched, to have no fingers.

And who today keeps faith with a companion?

Shabib and the most loyal man you see are brothers.

God has decreed, O Kafur, that you are first,

and will not decree that a second to you be seen.

So why do you choose bows, when in truth

through good fortune, humans and jinn shoot in your defense?

And why concern yourself with spearheads and spear-shafts,

when your fortune thrusts fiercely without a spearhead?

And why carry the sword with the long baldric,

when time's vicissitudes spare you the need for it?

Wish some good for me, whether you bestow it or not,

for whatever you wish for me comes to me.

If you hated the revolving celestial sphere's motion,

something would surely hinder it from revolving.