Sol 6.1

  1. Among us, horses marked for battle remain tethered,

    While Kulayb is tethered to humiliation and shame.

  2. Those who lodge in humiliation's abode whenever they settle,

    And Kulayb violates the neighbor's inviolable honor.

  3. And those who depart at their women's whims,

    With no ancestral distinction but asses.

  4. With Mu‘rid, or Mu‘id, or the sons of al-Khatafa,

    Do you hope, Jarir, to rival me and my high standing?

  5. A people who, when guests rouse their dog to bark,

    Tell their mother, 'Urinate on the fire!'

  6. They do not avenge their slain when they are killed,

    Nor ever countercharge when driven into hiding.

  7. And they remain scattered in their houses,

    Scurrying about, some distressed and others fleeing.

  8. So sit down, Jarir: you have faced a height

    Hard to scale; and a brimming, flowing sea has met you.

  9. Why did you not defend Ma‘add on a day of crushing calamity,

    As we defended Ma‘add on the day of Dhu Qar?

  10. Kisra's battalions came, enraged,

    So they annihilated them and felled every tyrant.

  11. Why did you not protect Shurahbil, though there had rallied

    To his aid Tamim, with a host of ignoble men?

  12. On the day of al-Kulab, when their women were herded off,

    Like market livestock, matrons and virgins alike,

  13. Made to ride pillion, won for us as spoils by spears,

    Calling to Riyah and calling to Marrar's clan.

  14. Abu Hanash lunged with a thrust and dealt him

    A broad, gaping wound that defeated every probe.

  15. And al-Ward gallops carrying ‘Usm among their fugitives,

    As though he were a butcher running with a cleaver.

  16. He calls upon horsemen, neither unsteady nor unarmed,

    From al-Lahazim, gray-haired men, not novices.

  17. Those who ward off what they hate on the morning of terror,

    When those coming to water mingle with those returning.

  18. And those who feed others, when a Syrian wind blows,

    Driving rainless clouds, slices of hump-fat from a plump, spring-grazed camel.

  19. When you dwelt at al-Marrut, skulking in a burrow,

    O son of al-Maragha, O woman pregnant with Mukhtar!

  20. She bore him prematurely, after the seventh month had passed,

    By a man with sagging flesh, grim-faced and black as pitch.

  21. A mother of lowborn stallion stock, tainted in breed,

    Bore him to a snorting stallion of lowborn stock.

Sol 6.1