عواذل ذات الخال في حواسد — Al Mutanabbi

The beauty-marked woman's reprovers are jealous of me;

and the maiden has in me a truly noble bedfellow.

He draws his hand back from her dress, though he is able,

and defies desire in her dream-image, even while asleep.

When can he find relief from longing's blaze in his breast—

a lover of hers who keeps his distance even when near?

If you fear disgrace in every private meeting,

why do beautiful, secluded maidens kindle your desire?

Illness pressed upon me until I grew used to it,

and my physician and the visiting women grew weary of my bedside.

I passed the beloved's house, and there nickered

my mare—can familiar haunts make horses grieve?

And what could the black mare fail to recognize in a dwelling's traces,

where the maidservants gave her blended milk from scant-milking camels?

I set my heart on something, and the nights seem

to drive me from its fulfillment, while I fight them back.

Alone, bereft of friends in every town:

when the goal is great, helpers are few.

And aiding me through peril after peril is

a swimming-strided mare, whose own traits bear witness to her worth.

She bends to match the spear-thrusts, as though

her joints beneath the spears were swivels.

The hindquarters of my horses are forbidden to the lances;

their upper chests and necklaces are lawful targets.

And I lead myself, the Indian-steel sword in my hand,

to watering places that send none back unless he fights.

But if the heart does not uphold its hand

in a given situation, no forearm can uphold the hand.

My two friends, I see none but poets;

why, then, are the claims theirs, but the poems mine?

So do not marvel: swords are many,

but today there is only one Sayf al-Dawla, Sword of the State.

His noble nature is what unsheathes him in war,

and his habit of kindness and pardon is what sheathes him.

And when I saw mankind beneath his station,

I knew for certain that Time is the assayer of men.

Most deserving of the sword is he who strikes necks,

and of safety, he to whom hardships are slight.

And the most wretched of God's lands are those inhabited by the Romans,

because of this man; yet none there denies your glory.

You unleashed raids upon them until you left them—

while the eyelid of one beyond the Franks stays sleepless—

blood-dyed, their people slain, as though these lands were

mosques, though the fallen were not prostrating in prayer.

You cast them headlong, their mountains serving as racing steeds,

and pierce them, with stratagems for spears.

And you hew them to pieces, though they have settled in rocky hills,

as black serpents dwell in the earth's belly.

And the fortresses towering on the peaks come to stand

with your horses as necklaces about their necks.

They swept over them on the day of al-Luqan, and drove them

at Hinrit, until Amid turned white with captives.

And they made Sabur share al-Safsaf's fate, and it fell,

and the people of both, and their boulders, tasted death.

And with them a fearless man rode through the valley before dawn,

blessed in what lies beneath his two face-veils, devout.

A youth who longs for vaster lands and more time,

his hours and goals too narrow to contain him.

A man of campaigns, whose swords never leave

their necks alone unless the Sayhan is frozen.

So none remained but women shielded from sword-edges by

their lips' dusky tint and their budding breasts.

The patricians weep bitterly for them in the dark,

while among us they lie cast aside, unsold.

Thus have the days decreed among their people:

one people's calamities are another people's gains.

And such is the nobility of daring that, among them,

you are loved despite the killing, as though you were a generous giver;

and blood you have spilled takes pride in you,

and a heart you have terrified praises you.

And everyone sees the paths of courage and generosity,

but the soul's own nature is the soul's guide.

You have plundered such spans of life that, had you possessed them,

the world would have been congratulated on your immortality.

Thus you are kingship's keen sword, and God strikes with it;

and you are faith's banner, and God ties it fast.

And you are Abu al-Hayja ibn Hamdan, O his son:

a noble son and father are alike.

And Hamdan is Hamdun, and Hamdun is Harith;

and Harith is Luqman, and Luqman is Rashid.

Those are all the fangs of the caliphate;

and the rest of the lands' kings are superfluous teeth.

I love you, O sun of the age and its full moon,

even if al-Suha and the Faraqid stars reproach me for you.

And that is because excellence in you is dazzling,

not because life with you is cool and easy.

For a little love guided by reason is sound,

and much love grounded in ignorance is unsound.