Sol 5.6

  1. Who will tell the young warriors that their brother

    has been barred by a stout door and its gatekeeper?

  2. He is in a plight whose like he would never have accepted;

    when he rises, fetters hamper him, answering his every move.

  3. On his shin, above the ankle, a black, mute thing—

    harsh, shortening and constraining his stride.

  4. This was not for any monstrous crime I had committed,

    but because an informer carried a tale he himself had forged.

  5. There was indeed a way across the spacious earth—

    and what man has ever had all his paths close in upon him?

  6. In the turns of time and days lies a lesson for man,

    and in all that has passed, should calamities strike him one day.

  7. Mus‘ab called me to him, and I answered;

    all my day and night I labored tirelessly in his service.

  8. Morning and evening I went, unceasingly, as though

    racing to seize the spoils of life.

  9. Yet my reward, when I made my mount kneel at his gate,

    was fetters and guards, its degrees of hardship severe.

  10. I did not break my covenant of allegiance with them,

    nor commit some reprehensible deed that I should dread.

  11. Where will you find another like me to defend you

    when the battle line’s battalions wheel into the clash?

  12. I am of a people among whom there will be remembered

    my valor, when even water chokes the man who drinks it.

  13. As though ‘Ubayd Allāh had never spent a night

    with his remounts stationed ready beneath their saddles;

  14. as though he had never summoned young warriors whose faces were

    lamps in a pitch-black night whose stars had vanished.

  15. By your life, after my pledged service and support,

    I am like a sword whose striking edges, once keen, have been notched.

  16. Al-Mukhtār knows that I am a bone lodged in his throat

    when every adversary who grapples with him turns away.

  17. I charge the horses against him, their throats running blood;

    now I thrust at him with the spear, and now I strike with the sword.

  18. How many a slain man I have left upon a battlefield,

    with its birds and foxes crouching over him;

  19. and many an impregnable fortress I have struck with a dawn raid,

    and folk of ease, while their minstrel beat the drum.

Sol 5.6