Sol 5.6

  1. Lo—who will carry my message to Khufāf?

    For I spare no one of Khufāf.

  2. Do you send me threats from far away,

    when a man like me is not frightened by rhymed lampoons?

  3. You married a slave-girl and were nursed by another;

    and your father was carried by Qiṭāf.

  4. May I be no son of a chaste woman if you do not see them—

    stirring battle-dust from the crests of the high ridges:

  5. gaunt as arrow-shafts, marked for war,

    and chestnut mares, their color like pure wars-dye.

  6. Ask among the tribes descended from the stock of Qays

    about us in great ordeals and sweeping assaults;

  7. they will tell you that I have the foremost claim to glory,

    inherited by one nobleman from another;

  8. that my palm is more bountiful when drought grips the people,

    and I more helpful to widows and the weak.

  9. We routed, when we met them, the army of Riʿl,

    Dhakwān too, and the assembled host of Banū Khufāf.

  10. Cowardice was no part of their nature; rather,

    we struck them with the third hearthstone—the crowning calamity.

Sol 5.6