Sol 6.1

  1. Who taught the heart what is dictated in love verse?

    Was it the doves' lament to it, or the camels' yearning moan?

  2. No, rather it is longing calling within our breasts,

    and the heart of the resolute hero answers.

  3. Every ailment has a skilled physician to treat it gently;

    but has the physician of blame and reproach cured you?

  4. Parting and estrangement: union is lost between them;

    so how can I hope to combat love with tedium?

  5. My anguish is killed within my breast and buried,

    for I regard venting it in complaint as weakness.

  6. They are pearls gathered up by their litter-bearing camels;

    they have merely exchanged shells for curtained canopies.

  7. And I cannot tell: have they used temple-locks to darken the

    eyelids, or dyed their temple-locks with kohl?

  8. The sand-dune has no doubt that boughs have walked

    upon it, but with leaves made of fine robes.

  9. Whoever sees the riders lying slain at their stopping-place

    calls it a grave, not a ruined campsite.

  10. The tribe has grown used to a night-visitor from your nocturnal passage;

    their guards spend the night in dread of it.

  11. My wasting and thinness now pass me off

    to the watcher as one of the slender brown spears among them.

  12. They never asked about my stay among their dwellings

    without my running through every excuse and pretext.

  13. God bless a people who freely offer guest-fare generously,

    yet rebuff the guests of their wide eyes!

  14. Had they no bright swords or Khatti spears, they would be aided

    by rapid blows and volleys from their eyes.

  15. It is as though between the eyelids of every eye

    that gazes lies the quiver of an archer of Banu Thuʿal.

  16. Neither is the garden of their faces pasture for our glances,

    nor their dusky lips a watering-place for caresses and kisses.

  17. Their smiling mouths resemble the cloud in its flashes,

    but not in its pouring bounty.

  18. They feared the evil eye for what their veils concealed

    of beauty, so they mingled loveliness with miserliness.

  19. O caravan scout, whose glances are enticed

    by lightning playing with the water of a rain-laden cloud:

  20. This is mankind's adornment; his blades quench

    hospitality's fire with the blood of full-grown she-camels.

  21. He asks no delegation what their saddlebags hold

    unless they arrive with them full of hope.

  22. Never have the riding-camels grazed in his groves

    without scorning buttercups and clover.

  23. If modesty makes you decline his gifts,

    he bestows them on you through stratagems and ruses.

  24. You fall short, O clouds, of reaching his utmost;

    your lightning is nothing but a blush of shame.

  25. And whoever would reconcile his bounty with his repose

    strives and toils for a peace harboring discord.

  26. A sword unsheathed for Hashim: when it meets hard

    targets, it fears no notched edge.

  27. Its hilt lies in the grasp of the victorious al-Qa'im,

    and its two edges are in the crowns of enemy heads.

  28. For him, white sheets are like slender bright swords,

    and the reed pen makes a swaying brown spear needless.

  29. How often his speech has laid rivals low,

    until they admitted that words are like deeds.

  30. Every adversary wishes he would envelop him

    in the sword's favor and spare him debate.

  31. Not all might resides in the solid spear;

    speech holds something sharper than Indian swords and lances.

  32. And men deluded by rebellion—you blended for them

    a plot of bitter sap within words of honey.

  33. No sooner had the throats of hearing savored its draught

    than the soul's daughters cried out in bereavement.

  34. With them you practiced a patience not sanctioned

    by forbearance, though man was created of haste.

  35. Then you enclosed them in a seamless grip, and they scattered

    like Saba's scattered bands, through the hollows of plain and mountain.

  36. Incantations do not cure every ailment;

    cautery better heals the skin of the festering, mangy sufferer.

  37. Tell the petty Arabs: Return to obedience; these are dynasties,

    and stabbing throats is easier than attacking dynasties.

  38. Far from it! Banu al-Abbas—their shade shall not

    depart from the arena of faith and worldly life.

  39. Their honor is guarded by one bitter to the taste,

    whose judgment rests between deliberation and haste.

  40. Easygoing, but when his indignation is provoked,

    death snarls, baring its crooked fangs.

  41. Come now, Uqayl! When his battalions are absent,

    you triumph; when they appear, you fly away with the partridges.

  42. Why not stand your ground, if only for a lightning flash?

    Flight offers no escape from appointed death.

  43. So forget the fertile lands, you truffle on a bare plain,

    and seek lodging among jerboas and monitor lizards.

  44. The spider's weave is among your costliest garments,

    and your finest food is the dung beetle's hoard.

  45. If they have known honor at times within their tent-ropes,

    now is the time for humiliation to dwell in the camps.

  46. Watch for it from al-Judi, lying hidden

    in its dust, as the sun lies hidden in twilight.

  47. If it is turned away from you for a day, tomorrow

    it will reach you at dawn or in the late afternoon.

  48. With every warrior whose nose quivers; never has

    his soul known the ways of the timid and helpless.

  49. His forearms are cursed whenever they close

    around his bow, by souls praying for paralysis.

  50. In a vast host, like dark clouds, entwined

    with lightning and thunder born of flashes and uproar.

  51. He drives full-grown steeds beyond their bridler's reach,

    as though their rider stood aloft upon a mountain.

  52. Their horseman has trained them to charge and advance,

    so you would think them all chest, without a rump.

  53. Have you not heard of Buladh and his family

    a tale that spread unchecked in the company of the proverb,

  54. when doom cast him down from a towering, sheer crag

    where death could not reach the mountain goat's lifeblood?

  55. He fell upon his mouth and hands, smeared with dust;

    indeed, for those who defy you, swords are like kisses.

  56. The birds disdain him, refusing to feed upon his corpse,

    knowing that he is among the foulest of foods.

  57. The earth is your home, and you spend the days

    on your enduring life, while kings are like servants.

  58. Delight our eyes until we can say to them:

    You have indeed seen all mankind in a single man.

Sol 6.1