Sol 6.1

  1. Umamah severed her bond, and Ra'um too.

    And what the two had kept unspoken and concealed came to light:

  2. their parting from us and choosing others in our stead.

    You knew well that I sought something other than that.

  3. Whenever they contemplate treachery, they resolve upon it,

    breaking faith; their union does not endure.

  4. And when they saw my decline, the beauties were beckoned

    by the bloom of youth; they have no sound judgment.

  5. They saw that old age had overtaken me,

    so my face is gaunt and drawn.

  6. They folded away the garment of cheerfulness that you had worn out;

    because of you they have whispered misgivings and worries.

  7. When I walk, I totter, making no haste,

    shuffling like a fettered man, scarcely able to move.

  8. Yet once they used to incline toward me,

    in the days when my plaits were coal-black.

  9. And I used to hold a favored place with a maiden,

    passing the night neither constrained nor denied.

  10. I would make the contentious man choke on his own saliva,

    so he turned away, weary of defending his honor.

  11. And early she would come to me with her delights—

    a tawny wine, free of dregs, the choicest first pressing,

  12. from aged wine over which its jars hunched,

    as though they were mangy, with pitch crusted upon them:

  13. a foreign wine of those the merchants bid high for,

    with vineyards at Anah and along the Euphrates.

  14. And a village woman keeps serving us with it,

    her ewer veiled at the mouth with her cloth scraps.

  15. When hands pass its glass cups around,

    it breathes fragrance, and even a man with a cold catches its scent.

  16. It is as though its drinker's tongue were struck

    by a fever from the sickness of Khaybar or Tihamah.

  17. And she cleaves the desert carrying me, when there loom

    its landmarks and it turns ghoul-like—a mighty she-camel,

  18. a demon of swift travel, as though she were a wary wild bull,

    at al-Lubnatayn, mottled as though tattooed.

  19. All night he was buffeted toward his sheltering hollows

    by a crosswind lashing his face, and by clouds.

  20. Chilled in hide, he seemed a man with a head wound,

    whose wounds had chilled him with their smarting pain.

  21. And it seemed that down his pointed horn there flowed,

    from moisture gathered like moss, pearls strung together.

  22. Until, when his night had lifted from him

    and hard uplands and rugged ridges appeared around him,

  23. the droop-eared hunting hounds rushed upon him, charging,

    like leather thongs, with no flesh upon their heads.

  24. He sped away like a lamp, now rising into view,

    now flashing, pressing on though beset.

  25. Until, when his fright had lifted from him

    and the routed beast recovered after his flight,

  26. the untamed bull of the wilderness brandished his weapons at them,

    raging, his muzzle smeared with foam.

  27. He lunged, killing outright whatever his horn struck,

    his brow blood-caked and smeared with gore.

  28. Then they drew back from him, and he turned away, traversing

    the sands at Khubbah, now moving, now standing still.

  29. He grazes the summer pastures of the deserts of Hamiz,

    and at Khaynaf he has a distant refuge and ranges.

  30. And many a young antelope's wilderness, where sandgrouse lose their way—

    and where the guide seems wounded in the brain—

  31. I traversed when its heat blazed;

    such am I: headlong in confronting affairs.

  32. I crossed it by night on a tall she-camel whose companions

    lowed, while she stifled her lowing.

  33. And Umm Jahm would visit by night a band of riders

    whose flesh noon's heat and the scorching wind had cooked.

  34. After their long night journey, they sank down heavily,

    and lay huddled beside their camels' knees.

  35. So I dreamed of her, with the sons of Rufaydah between me and her;

    may her dreamed-of phantom never be far away!

  36. She crossed the rugged hills of al-Urayt, before which stood

    Arabs who turn back those burdened with cares, and Romans.

  37. They halted the mounts at a well of ancient standing,

    brimming and flowing, yet dark and silt-choked.

  38. And its pigeons' voices in its depths seemed,

    at evening, when they clamored, like quarreling opponents.

  39. They alight on the worn trough-rim, as though it were

    an ancient, demolished trench around a tent.

  40. When the great bucket is tipped into a chipped trough,

    hidden holes and fissures drink its water.

  41. Jumay', you were left trailing, a slave and follower,

    and you remain silenced and gagged.

  42. So attend to yourself, Jumay', and do not

    go wandering for the sons of Qaribah and the clans.

  43. Turn your tongue away from Usayyid: they are

    noxious forage for anyone against whom they bear rancor.

  44. Pull yourself back, for I am not ignorant

    of you, nor, if I speak, am I one to be silenced.

  45. And look, Jumay', when your spear-shaft is shaken,

    whether your spear-shaft has a boring worm and flaws.

  46. Sons of Qaribah, what disgraces you is

    a lineage base when ancient ancestry is reckoned,

  47. from a tainted father and an unworthy maternal uncle,

    and evil among you, both new and old.

  48. Sons of Qaribah, woe to you! Do not mount

    the pack-saddle of error: it is ill-omened.

  49. And many a hacked-up man with drenched garments, as though

    a female elephant had trampled him with her padded foot—

  50. Usamah killed him; afterward no anger rose on his behalf

    in anyone, nor did the stars darken for him.

Sol 6.1