أجدر وأخلق أن ترن عوائدي — Albohtry

How fitting, how proper that my women visitors should wail,

and my close friends be grieved, and my envier gloat.

Separation came upon me, destroying my lifeblood.

Oh, the anguish of my heart at the separation that has come!

All the lands have closed in on me because of it,

until I thought the earth a hunter's net.

Does the one I love depart, safe and at ease,

while I go about in the garb of one despoiled and bereft?

By God, I live on, while sorrow within my breast

from parting makes me drink the venom of black serpents.

O gazelle of the tents, from Dhat al-Ghada,

The threat proved true; where, then, is the fulfillment of promises?

What harm would it do you if you cooled the burning heat

within my breast with the moisture of a cool mouth?

If you spent the night with worries tugging at you, you would pity me,

and through you my night would be a sleeper's night.

O her two camel-drivers, linger; do not hurry

away from me with your shy, fleeing gazelle.

Tell him to return a lovesick man's heart,

if he is not to return to union.

Ah, for his two eyes, which showed themselves;

then he fled when we startled him, offering no resistance.

O Time, will you bring her dwellings near to me,

after tormenting me with long estrangement?

O Time, how often you have hurt me, yet found me

not complaining of the wrong, nor denying it.

How long must I endure you, as you inflict on me

humiliation, and oppress me with a grudge-bearer's might?

And whenever I strove and a prospect of wealth appeared to me,

you hastened to deny me, with a grudging man's haste.

How often you have raised an ignorant man and an obscure one,

while bringing low a man of intellect and noble lineage!

You favored their fortunes in every affair,

while you were no helper to the noble.

How strange those people whose bonds I maintained,

and whom I defended in their absence at every gathering.

And I concealed their faults, and fought

whoever sought to disparage them, with every effort.

Then I saw the deceit in their breasts through their eyes,

and the eye, in every circumstance, is the fairest witness.

I knew this, yet did not cease to draw them near—

for forbearance is for kin and strangers alike—

until I heard what they said out of rancor,

and their deeds were those of an oppressive, envious man.

So I kept to myself, not laying bare their secrets,

and held my adviser and my supporter back from them.

So they deemed gracious pardon weakness, after

they had shown an ingrate's ingratitude for generous bounty.

Then, sleeves rolled up, I inflicted humiliation

upon them, without lying in exaggerated words.

So I branded their faces with marks that humbled

their necks before mankind, after necklaces had adorned them.

And I exposed their folly in truthful speech,

in the setting forth of prose and the composing of odes.

And I made them the laughingstocks of gatherings for all their days,

and a diversion for the grief-stricken and the carefree.

Whenever they saw me approaching, I saw them

with darkened faces, their eloquent speaker like one frozen.

And whenever I turned away, they shielded themselves with vile abuse,

despised by the discerning critic.

Each longs for my death, if he could secure it

at the cost of losing his mother herself, and his father.

And God is readier to aid the peaceable man of reason,

and God is readier to forsake the stubborn wrongdoer.

You have said—if words were heeded—'Take heed! Beware

a lion that crushes you with a massive forearm!'

But they persisted in the rancor of their breasts, and were left

like dry brushwood for a beater and a hunter.

If you deny what I say, be their neighbor;

you will know their shamefulness in a single day.

Indeed, when a noble man sees one who is base,

he turns affection away from him, like one driving him out.

Never pass over people of affection and piety;

you will gain the best supporter and pledged ally.