أأزمعت من آل ليلى ابتكارا — Al Asha

Have you resolved to leave Layla’s family at dawn?

She has gone too far away for one who loves her to visit.

The forces of separation have carried her away,

and in her place I was left with longing and remembrance.

My tears overflowed like brimming buckets,

sometimes falling gently, sometimes streaming down.

As when a string releases from its setting

small pearls that tumble downward.

After a little while, I rebuked my youthful folly,

and my composure returned to me.

Now I do not approach the beautiful women,

holding myself firmly back from desire.

And the man you once knew,

in the days when we camped at al-Jifār,

has exchanged youth for wisdom;

gray hair has veiled him like a covering.

Gray hair has laid its burdens upon him,

though it came upon him only as age comes.

Yet if you see me in such a state,

having spurned youth and forsaken trade,

I may still bring out a sheltered young woman

from her chamber and spread the gaming pieces.

And a drink with a shining hue like gemstones—

I came to it early and drank deep at dawn.

I went to it just before sunrise,

whether for a taste or for a full draught.

The openhanded man defies those who reproach him;

he gives the needy drink and loosens his robe.

Before the cock had crowed, I had filled

a cup of wine for him, and he passed it around.

When the fair-faced man bends among the cupbearers,

they toss him silver or gold.

The yearning of a clinging love I put out of mind

with a roaming mount that makes light of rough ground:

one of five survivors of the night journey,

pale ones whose likeness evokes a herd.

They were driven toward two companions at a secluded place,

and those two kept the bonds among them.

The two returned to them and attended to them,

sharing the work and the planning.

One prepares fodder for them,

and the other gathers fresh greenery among them.

She was their finest one,

pleasing the eyes and meeting the demands of travel.

My evening departures and morning journeys have left

some of them with short, worn hoof coverings.

And broad, thin bones, as though a blade

had marked lines upon their sides.

And close-set vertebrae like axes,

with the spine joining bone to bone.

So do not complain to me of sore feet

or long night travel; bear it patiently.

Travel at evening and set out in the morning,

day after day, until you meet the chosen ones.

You will meet Qays and his followers;

he kindles fire upon fire for war.

I say to her when departure grows urgent:

What an excellent lord and neighbor you have reached!

Who will carry word to our people of Mālik—

by that I mean Bakr, the gathered host?

Here is your lord: swear allegiance to him

when kingship gives a people its support.

For God has favored you with him

when people divide a matter of great weight.

Closeness to him brings you honor;

he has placed you within his rule and sought your counsel.

For he is the one whose gifts are hoped for

when we come to him by choice.

A man of war when war grows full-grown,

he rose toward honor and took the heights.

Amid dust, the dust of the dune, he attacked

ʿAbs and Dūdān fiercely one day.

You reduced one people and made another prosper;

you laid waste homes in their land.

This is God’s gift, for God

hears secrets even in hidden places.

How many a mourning woman among them

has fastened her wrap around herself,

hung an amulet, and refused an evening drink,

sleeping through her drowsiness only by day.

You gained command, and one night embraced her;

she urges the young camels on and calls for Yasar.

So do not think me ungrateful to you,

and do not think I seek a change.

By your forebear, if you had not come,

al-Ḥurth would have been too restless to wait.

Like a strange female circling amid watering troughs,

fearing death and seeking al-Jifār.

And on a day when blood soaked the women,

you made your cloak a head covering.

What a night I had at Laʿlaʿ,

like a stranger circling in fear of capture.

When he came to us shortly after sleep,

we bowed before him and raised ʿAmmār.

That was a time of piety and purity,

and a time when the course of kingship changed.

To a king, the best of his peers;

everything has its settled end.

To one who bears his people’s burdens

when time brings great troubles.

His neighbors are never made afraid,

and his forbearance never seems borrowed.

No pledge of protection given by him is lost

or left uncertain before his eyes.

No evening rain cloud, driven by the south wind,

that waters crops and rises over houses,

turning ships onto their prows

and toppling tamarisks along the banks,

while its sailor fears the waves

and lowers the sails and slackens the rigging,

is more generous than he is with tawny riding beasts

whose young cling to them, flushed red.

He gives away a hundred choice camels,

whether young pregnant ones or those near calving.

And every tall steed, as though oil

lay where the hide covers its inner coat.

With it a thousand are sent reeling when it charges

in the morning, when battle dust rises.

Nor is an Aylite worshipper before a shrine

he built and strengthened, standing within it,

alternating his prayers to the King,

now bowing low and now crying aloud,

greater than he in reverence at the reckoning

when living souls shake off the dust.

Your fire drill is the best of kings’ fire drills;

markh and ʿafār woods are joined in it.

If they strike their fire drills, they find

their own sparks faint and short beside it.

If you tried to strike a spark at night

from a pebble with nabʿ wood, you would kindle fire.

And what am I, to claim these verses

after gray hair? That would be shame enough.

Poetry has bound me within its house

as captors bind a wild ass.

When the land and its landmarks hide you,

the thunderclouds will cease their rain upon it.