النجاء النجاء من أرض نجد — Sardar

Flee, flee from the land of Najd,

before the heart becomes caught in longing.

Indeed, that soil surely makes longing sprout

in the breast of one dead to desire, hard as stone.

How many a man untouched by love went there at dawn and, by evening,

was raving about Alwa or Hind!

And gazelles there confront friend

and foe with an army of beauty:

with spaced teeth in smiling mouths that entice,

and a languor from their eyes that infects;

and fingers which, were it not for their delicacy, would be thought,

for their crimes, to be lions' claws;

and speech which, when we heard it, left us unable to tell

whether they had sprinkled us with wine or honey.

Disdaining veils of silk brocade and silk were

cheeks they had already veiled with roses.

They had no need of their curtained chambers once they hid

from their lovers behind distance and rejection.

A stay at Alij, while the mounts

stride swiftly across Yabrin with the departing travelers?

After you, the protected pasture is no halting place, nor is the water

of al-Liwa a watering place once you desert it.

And the heart you once knew as unruly

your prolonged cruelty and transgression have tamed.

What proof of my longing do you want

other than this which I conceal and reveal?

A liver upon which, whenever I lay

my palm, they say: 'You are kindling a fire-stick!'

And eyelids streaming in flood, while the water of the

sea finds respite between ebb and flood.

O sons of Murra ibn Dhuhl, your father—

what a father! And your grandfather—what a grandfather!

White blazes on the faces of Bakr; and Bakr

is a beauty mark that has turbaned the heads of Ma'add.

Young men, in forbearance, like mature men,

and mature men as impetuous as beardless youths.

I am one of you: when we reach the ancestral

root, we intertwine like ban and rand trees.

A kinship in which no difference lies between us,

save two ways of life: settled and nomadic.

Yours are the spear and spearhead, while I possess

what you love of eloquence and glory.

Free me from your gazelle, or I shall call

upon the one who rescues captives and ransoms them:

Abu al-Qasim, who planted favors

upon the twin hills of acclaim and praise.

Whenever a breeze of petition blows

over his branches, they scatter gifts.

In his hands are two clouds, for shade

and for rain, without lightning or thunder.

His cheerfulness granted supplicants access to him

when grimness greeted them with rejection.

He chose noble deeds so wholly that we said:

'Are they begotten through slave ownership, or a marriage contract?'

The difference between him and anyone else

is the difference between the sea's depths and a scant pool.

What grass grows in that level, gravelly valley,

and what water for pasture and for drinking!

You see him only astride the shoulders of

resolve, driving lofty glory onward with fortune and diligence.

How many a foe he has slain with a threat,

and a friend he has revived with a promise from him!

You cannot tell whether it was from a garden's finery

that God fashioned him, or from the pearls of its necklace.

Through fine deeds people claim kinship

with glory, not through 'before' and 'after.'

He brings forth, in the gloom of calamities when they grow

dark, stars of good fortune from his judgment.

Firm resolves that yield to no enchanter,

and forbearance that no rancor can rouse;

and a keenness which, if it belonged to a

sword, would never let its edges doze in a sheath.

We have seen wonders in him, among

them fruits gathered from Indian aloeswood.

He took people captive with kindness; and a favor

upon a free man is like a rawhide halter.

He accepts no clothing except

that in which praise shines and is woven.

Eyes forever ask about him:

'Has he clothed himself in gratitude or in a cloak?'

Count as many pebbles and raindrops as you wish:

his lofty merits cannot be tallied.

And if the eyes of the envious look upon him,

they are inflamed with images of distress.

O his enemies, were you as numerous as Ya'juj,

his cunning would cast you behind a barrier.

It is all the same when he races along his course,

whether by his virtues he races or on sleek steeds.

Race-prize reeds that cannot be followed in second place

by eagles' inner feathers except with toil.

May God grant you what you wish, an increase

whose flood stops at no limit,

in a spring like the gardens of Eden,

and abodes that are all abodes of eternity.

If I am absent from you, my tongue in gratitude

is not far away, nor my heart in praise.

They are the two small organs; without them,

humankind would be like tawny and dusky beasts.

Test people: you will loathe them or befriend them.

Can a dinar be acquired except by assaying it?