لقد غدوت على الندمان لا حصر — Akhtal

You have indeed gone early to the drinking companions—not a miser

whose harm is feared, nor a sluggish, mean-spirited man;

openhanded as Bishr or Abu Hanash,

no uninvited drinker when you meet him, nor a miser.

And Abu Ghaylan sometimes visits his companions at dawn

with wine whose vessel holds no sediment:

pure first-run wine drawn from an old, worn wineskin,

as though a great, spurting vein were gushing from it.

Wine of ʿAna, whose fragrance the breezes bear aloft—

if the dead were given it to drink, they would rise again.

At times I talk with Arwa when she is alone,

yet neither talking nor looking has satisfied my longing for her.

She does not cure you of the sickness you harbor—

Arwa—nor do you find contentment in what she has.

As though a musk pod, whose dealer went down to the lowlands

until the trader bought it at the highest price in his dealings,

were on Arwa's lips—or wine mixed with water,

from which a cool star rises above the glass.

Will a well-broken she-camel bring you close to Arwa,

with no lameness or crookedness to complain of?

She is like an Akhdari wild ass among his mates,

whose tracks lie in every distant place:

irascible and jealous, his herd cannot be approached;

no watering is true watering, nor his leading them away true departure.

Ruddy—you would think the hue of wars-dye had mingled with him,

as though he were a stone when he hurtles away.

Amid a herd that grazed the rugged ground through its summer,

until, when their rumps and navels grew fat,

they became long-bodied and lean-bellied as they donned

Shaʿban, and the fur fell away from their rumps.

Their flanks seemed Coptic linen once they grew lean,

and the last of their moisture could almost be wrung out.

He drives them as his whims dictate, a harsh beast,

despite their resentment, until their friskiness is gone.

His nostrils bleed; they have wounded his brow,

so he sometimes punishes them and takes revenge.

A loud brayer among mature she-asses—the deserts have thinned him through his summer;

so his ribs are fleshed, while his flank is drawn in.

He has been worn down, some of his breastbones laid bare,

by the day's length and an unrelenting, sleepless night.

Until, when there shone out clearly in the dawn

his al-Jawza, and the wild ass bent over, digging,

and the wind bound his thick lips with buhma-grass,

and Naʿman's floodwater and greenery gathered,

the thirsty beast remained on rugged ground, beset

by a day when the wild beasts' fat almost melted.

He digs for seep-wells at Ẓaby; they already know

from where the rugged ground pours its water into it.

And every hope he had cherished deceived him—

hope of scant pools; the ponds had dried up their water.

So he expects little from them, and he has no

water in reserve at al-Bayḍatayn or al-ʿĪṣ.

He reminded them of a watering-place whose drinking reaches were blue;

there is a roar when the wind swirls among them.

A hard-biting stallion—when they flick their tails, he catches up

with a gallop that the keen, broad-headed arrow cannot match.

He drives them with a ringing bray that he rattles

between his ribs, and a gallop that never leaves him breathless.

His hoof-frogs are hard, so flint cannot bruise him,

nor do the fleshy pads at his two pasterns spread.

Protecting them when evening finds them in a fearsome place

are a keen eye and a fearful, watchful heart.

So they are fearful, shielding themselves with him,

while he, amid fear, sniffs and follows tracks.