بعمرك تدري أي شأني أعجب — Albohtry

By your life, do you know which of my two states is stranger?

For both are puzzling, their outward aspect and their hidden one.

My madness for Layla, while Layla is untroubled by love;

And my inclination toward Su'da, while Su'da keeps away.

When she dresses, she is the beauty of her dress,

And she steals the beholder's wits when she is stripped.

And I named her Zaynab out of fear of people,

And how often Zaynab has hidden a love from people!

The bloom of worldly life, matching in its varied forms

The vicissitudes of this ever-changing world;

And an everlasting garden that tormented us with her coquetry,

Though I never thought we would be tormented in the gardens of paradise.

Ah, many a cup whose choicest wine was served to me

By one delicate in his swaying, bright-mouthed, with cool white teeth.

When his fingertips took on some of its deep redness,

You saw silver being gilded by the wine.

As though his eyes held what he came carrying

In his hands from its wine vessel, when it was mixed.

Indeed, what swiftly seized my mind was what I spent the late night

Watching close by—not what I spent the night drinking.

Beside a meadow whose plants spring lavishly watered

With bright morning rainclouds, streaming and pouring down.

When, in the morning, the buttercups along its edges

Were opening, you imagined gold dinars being minted.

In all earnestness, time's reversals have begun

To act in earnest, though we have been playing with time.

And fifty years have firmly brought back

To gray hair one who turned away, fleeing gray hair.

So desist: I am circling, then hovering,

About my own nature, or going wherever I go.

I looked, with Ra's al-'Ayn east of me—

Its monastery towers—and al-'Asimiyya to the west.

At the Khabur bridge: are the people of Manbij

In Manbij, or have they gone away from it, out of sight?

And the enemies did not move until you surprised them

With a dark mass of troops, its bright swords blazing.

When it spread over the earth, its farthest reaches exceeded

The eye's range, until the weary eye wavered.

And Ibn Bistam, all by himself, spared me

The need to outnumber the enemies when they banded together.

My brother when calamities grow grave; for truly

Your brother is the one who brings contentment when you are angry.

In soft attire he inspires hope and is looked to

For bounty; in arms he is feared and dreaded.

Nor was he kept from spearing the cavalry, advancing

Into its terrors, by having spent the night writing.

The keen swords refer their judgment

To a pen that signals to them where to strike.

Commander of an army whose tumult subdued the earth,

And his resolve is more tumultuous than that army.

When a crisis defied discovery of its approach, he found his way

To what should be sought in it or avoided.

We rely, though bounty is far out of reach,

On a lord whose bounty draws near and comes close.

On a king whose face avarice does not hide

From us; it is the miser's way to stay concealed.

And a fair-faced man: when he delights in giving, there rises

Upon his face a hue suffused with gladness.

Men's dispositions lie idle, while he has

Cares of glory that burden and weary him.

He has a stirring born of his openhearted generosity,

At which the barren earth almost grows grass.

Seekers' packs are set down before a young man

Whose freely given gifts are spoils for anyone who seeks them.

Before a novice with his wealth, readily stirred

By small obligations, though he is a seasoned veteran.

Whenever we say a calamity has sobered him,

He throws himself headlong, compliant in spirit and yielding.

Gifts surpass the furthest limits of reason;

We would almost disbelieve them, were it not for seeing them.

Bounty that, if we raided it, would be booty,

And its gains pale when it is revisited.

Character traits that, had Ziyad encountered their like,

He would not have said, 'Which man is without fault?'

I marvel at him: he has not grown vain with self-admiration,

While through him we strut in pride and are filled with admiration.

May you be ransomed, Abu al-'Abbas, from death's calamities

By people in whom expectations fail and prove false.

I passed over the benefactors for you, and have never ceased

Turning from them toward you and steering clear.

The poems have not turned aside from you in the least,

Nor left any merit to be credited to another.

We string pearls from them upon their threads,

And a marvel it is to string what is not pierced.

For had Tayy shared in your noble deeds,

Some people would have imagined I was being partisan.

Whenever one deluded about me asks about my resolve,

One who has gained or been disappointed will tell him of it.

My passion delights a people and grieves them;

And what I compose about them, in varied forms and at length, lives on.

And time's recurring turns have left nothing but lingering traces

Of speech that please listeners and anger them.