1. Ah, may you two remain safe despite age and decay,

    at Duma in Khabt, O two ruined camps!

  2. Had I been stricken with measles at Duma, gravely ill,

    and given Su'ad's saliva to drink, it would have cured me.

  3. How can the physician cure me of lovesickness,

    while Barra is with al-A'war ibn Bayan?

  4. Would he lay a foul-smelling, barren belly

    upon the forever-quivering belly of a young beauty?

  5. The guards hold me back from her; would that I

    had crossed the night to her with fettered steps.

  6. Why did you not take omens from the birds the night you came to him,

    at Dayqa, between the Pleiades and Aldebaran?

  7. My heart refuses to forget, despite all that wears it away,

    its slayers from Salim and Aban.

  8. Whenever I say, 'I shall forget their memory,' there appear

    other snares from Banu al-Jalafan.

  9. My two friends, it is no sound counsel to leave me

    in a wilderness where two owls howl.

  10. And after I had slept a while, I was kept awake—

    with a keen sword, polished by smiths, as my bedfellow—

  11. by the clamor of two guests familiar with that wasteland:

    a crow and a wolf, forever trotting.

  12. When they came to me beside my provisions, I was not

    miserly, nor did I pine for them when they left me.

  13. When both race for what my hand throws, he is outstripped

    in getting it by a sharp-eyed Abyssinian.

  14. His wing keeps him clear of the other, and at times

    he alternates between walking and hopping.

  15. When they came upon me, my soul was seized by them

    with a shudder, and my heart grew more afraid.

  16. When I saw that the earth was closing in upon me,

    I mounted, amid terror and at an untimely hour,

  17. a massive she-camel, a demon of speed, as though she were

    a building at Aqr, or a choice sire of white camels.

  18. When my hand punishes her with the whip, she alternates,

    despite fatigue, between mule-like trotting and tail-swishing,

  19. with a tufted, straight-boned tail, as though it were

    a branch bearing dates over her rump and thigh-sinews.

  20. It is as though the two sides of her poll, as they slope down

    onto the bright side of her neck, were two rivulets.

  21. As though I and my whole frame were on a braying wild ass's back,

    one that kept close to a chaste, smooth-backed she-ass.

  22. He tended her in two deserts until she entered summer,

    and the two months of scorching and stifling heat arrived.

  23. He did not stir her toward water until there had taken hold

    dust-laden winds across level plains and hard uplands.

  24. Then he accompanied nine rival wives, like bows,

    raising the upland's dust with their bounding.

  25. At times they scatter, and at times he strikes them,

    as the well's two sides strike the water-drawer's bucket.

  26. The leading she-asses batter his shoulders and his head,

    so both sides of his neck are drenched with blood.

  27. Were it not for Yazid, son of the imam, I would have been struck

    by calamities my tongue brings down upon me.

  28. Nothing has reached me in the letters except your warning,

    and, had you wished, you could have sent my safe-conduct.

  29. So I swore not to come willingly to Nisibis,

    nor to prison, until the two sacred months have passed:

  30. nights when the sandgrouse cannot bring its chicks

    water at Dhu Abhar, nor at Hifan.

  31. It draws back from little downy chicks, which seem,

    when they toddle beneath the shade, like afani plants.

  32. The remnants of yolk where they toddled seem

    like crumbled saffron in singing girls' sleeping quarters,

  33. beside each frail hatchling, as though

    two shells had split apart in its scraped-out nest.

  34. Word reached me, while my family was at al-Azaghib, that

    eight horses of pure stock had come in succession.

  35. They were gathered, and God gave first place to those deserving it,

    at its proper time, amid a gathering and a wager.

  36. When they mounted the ground east of Mu'niq,

    they scattered Homs's gravel in every direction.

  37. When they had measured out ninety bowshots of ground,

    the black mare sped like rain, bearing al-Salatan.

  38. As though the two, when they sweated and came into view,

    were stripped of their garments, shivering with cold.

  39. As though the Berber's clothes, carrying him aloft, were

    whirlwinds of a bitter, fiercely blowing wind.

  40. When the finishing posts lay far off, both strove hard,

    and every watering-place fell short of the one they sought.

Sol 6.1