عفا الجو من سلمى فبادت رسومها — Akhtal

Al-Jaww lies deserted without Salma; her traces have vanished,

and Dhat al-Safa—its desert plain and its sandy woodland.

What lies between al-Kulab and Habis has become

a wilderness, sung to by its owls at night.

It lies empty, save for lone remnants gleaming as though they were

stars appearing as their clouds clear away.

Amid luxuriant growth, moisture flows through its meadows;

the east wind's downpours watered it, then its steady rain.

Whenever I said, 'Its trailing showers have slackened,' there came

the wind bearing more from a source that swiftly replenishes.

It kept showering the valley floor of Khabt and Ar'ar,

and their land, until its massive bulk settled low.

It covered them both with water until bowed low

the crests of the uplands—their flats and rugged hills.

With a thunder-chanting cloud, its cloud-banks low, as though it were

sworn never to leave Dhat Milh.

When the south wind thrust into it, it drove forward

the rear of a vast host, whose flanks tumbled together.

May God give Salma's dwelling a full draught of its rain,

though no one lovesick for Salma is cured.

If Salma entrusted me with a secret, I would bear it;

and who bears secrets but their discreet keeper?

One of the desert-dwelling Arab women, she was never

scorched by Damascus's fever and pleurisy.

Toward you, Abu Marwan, riding parties headed,

coming to you on worn-out mounts, scant of flesh.

They grew bare and worn, facing the summer's blaze,

whose scorching wind changes men's complexions.

Toward you from the lowlands, until crowded together

were their saddle-loops on dark mounts with little fat.

In hope of your wealth: whoever makes for you

finds good fortune whose delights never lapse.

For you are he whose bounty the destitute hope for,

when the ashen year's stars fail to bring rain.

My soul fills me with longing for Iraq and its people;

Bishr among them is its beloved and intimate friend.

When my she-camel reaches Bishr ibn Marwan,

my soul sheds its fear, and its cares fall asleep.

A leader who drives the cavalry, till they seem

spear-points, crooked and straight alike,

into battle, till war bows after

its swaggerers have raged and its great bull-camels grow hot with fury.

Your father is Abu al-Asi; toward you has turned

Quraysh: its proud nose and its very core are yours.

He refused to let the crown rest on any but you,

for Abu al-Asi's proud lords, whose bridle is unyielding.

Through you God rescued creation, after

its thief had prowled within it and its tyrant had risen.

You are indeed the one hoped for and the one through whom refuge is sought,

when the gravest of those affairs are feared.

And in the other ordeal, when it grows confused, you

surely sever the binding cords of affairs, decisively cutting them.

So do not feed my flesh to enemies; indeed,

their guile and slander hurry toward you.

By my life, if Kulayb have followed one another

in obeying their misleader, and their judgments have gone astray,

they have surely tested in me a hard, stout spear-shaft,

when the feeble shafts and the easily wearied ones groan.

I am no laggard if the course is lengthened,

and no victim of a bite from me escapes.

I surely stand firm in positions that neither

Jarir nor a client of Jarir could hold.

Does the son of a dog revile me because Darim surged

over him, and he wrestled with a rock he cannot budge?

The sons of Darim are hard nab' trees; but you,

sons of the dog, are tamarisks whose flaws are never hidden.

But for my wariness of Riyah, I would assail it

with honor-wounding satire whose brands endure.

The son of Yarbu sings of my reviling his mother,

yet she did not escape me with her hide intact.

Nor did they find him an Arab mother,

nor did circumcision-wounds keep her awake.

And it has emerged from al-Maragha's offspring that

despite prodding and exhaustion, her brisk trot endures.

She stripped her two donkeys bare, though her arse had been

gripping the donkey's backbone fiercely.

I found Kulayb the basest of all people,

and when Kulayb are counted, you are their basest.