Sol 5.6

  1. A gazelle ran alone amid the tribe’s departure,

    long-striding and fleet.

  2. I said to my companion, while my heart yearned:

    “Do you take these rightward-passing birds as an omen, or augur evil?”

  3. He said, “Yes—they ran when Salma departed,

    and some partings are calamitous and far-reaching.”

  4. My eyes’ tears, on the day they left, seemed

    like pearls whose frail string had betrayed them;

  5. their laden camel-litters, on the day they set forth, seemed

    like grape clusters, while the grazing herd surged and the slow-paced hurried—

  6. clusters of grapes the eye kept watering until

    they cast trembling shade in every noonday heat.

  7. I said to my servant, “Quick—bring ‘Atwa!”

    A nimble, mettlesome fellow sprang up

  8. and brought her, her gear rattling as she raced,

    her tall neck like a lofty trunk.

  9. She trots briskly when you ride her over rugged heights,

    and through soft ground she flies—

  10. like a hard rock of the flats, scoured clear

    and laid bare by a foaming, eroding torrent.

  11. When she felt the rein, she swept me violently onward,

    as a keen, broad-edged cleaver hews.

  12. When Salma’s departing litters came into view,

    proud, disdainful anger barred me from speaking with them,

  13. and I felt both eager joy and fear;

    a loudly twanging Yemeni bow weighed upon me,

  14. with slender blue arrows of its own,

    swaying from deadly points or a hollow quiver;

  15. and a gleaming white sword that snatches bodies away,

    and a heart neither constricted nor trembling.

  16. What an excellent man of spearplay, when a coward wheels

    amid his reinforcements, or a turning foe gives way—

  17. when one raiding host advances toward another

    and death mingles with the massed ranks.

  18. When I caught up, there confronted me

    fierce men who seemed to be swords.

  19. They asked, “What has befallen you?” I said, “A band—

    the enemy, whose like inspires fear—

  20. spoke long of you, so I spurred with all my strength;

    the guide compelled me to that racing.”

  21. They said, “Do not shoot at us; draw near—

    you are our forward scout and our rear guard.”

  22. They spent the night gathered atop a dune,

    fearful, huddled as though inside a shelter.

  23. All night the sky pelted us with fine rain,

    and a wind whose violent blast would not die.

  24. No shape took form before a night traveler’s eye,

    nor any track appeared to one following spoor.

  25. I plunged into peril and discharged my debt,

    like a slender male serpent of At’aba:

  26. when it meets branches, it slips free through them,

    neither misshapen, nor coarse, nor timorous.

  27. When at last I pressed into your quarter,

    all creation slept and half the night had passed.

  28. I tapped her bracelet, and she smiled at me

    in a voice neither nasal nor quavering—

  29. smiling like a white doe calling her fawn

    where knotted dunes and curving sand ridges converge.

  30. She said, while slumber roamed within her eyes:

    “Deaths have surely arrayed themselves against you.

  31. Do not perish, nor let us perish—bestir yourself;

    do not grieve, for fortune ever turns.”

  32. I said, “Will you not requite a lover devoted to you,

    whom love of you has stricken with severe illness?”

  33. She answered—lying, a beguiler:

    “I have no heart acquainted with such love.

  34. Perhaps on another return, if you return, you will attain

    your desire—for sometimes even the aloof is given drink.”

  35. I rose to a powerful she-camel, and by morning she was

    effacing her tracks, her two sides humming.

  36. She startled the desert’s gazelles, and they veered away from us;

    each took fright and bolted lightly.

  37. It was as though she bore balanced packs—and dread—

    with tattered cloths fluttering around her in the wind.

  38. No dust-colored sandgrouse leaving a watering place,

    racing toward its lean chick with its tiny crop,

  39. was swifter than my she-camel on the day I drove her

    into a trackless desert where not a sip was found.

Sol 5.6