أمردود لنا زمن الكثيب — Albohtry

Will the time of the sand dune be restored to us,

and the bright brow of that hand-reared fawn?

And will the days of youth come round again,

though the sins of gray hair have waxed full?

When she smiles, the teeth on both sides of her mouth gleam

over white honey stirred into milk.

Whenever the sun nears setting, it regains

its radiance from the radiance of those tooth-edges.

The slanderers insist on counting—

though I have not sinned—my love for you among my sins.

Whoever they acknowledge as innocent, I remain

suspect in public, accused in my absence.

I am suspect in my love for you; they found grounds

against me—and grounds lie against the suspect.

So let the reproacher add nothing beyond a prayer

for a distant dwelling or the beloved's desertion.

The last drops of tears are poured more freely

by anguish from the longings of hearts,

and by a turn between each age's two turns:

calamities heaped upon calamities.

Toward Ibn Abi Muhammad set out

the swaying camel-herds, bearing us straight through the night.

The journey ranged from the earth's south,

far afield, while the camels were broad of flank.

It drives them across plain after plain,

and forces them over lava-field after lava-field,

to a king whose hands' bounty makes you think

the sea's flood a stream from a well.

He was, and I was—though our conditions differed,

one praising for reward, or one giving reward—

he singular in character, I a stranger to the land;

so the one stranger did not leave the other empty-handed.

Hamula grants us gifts from afar,

while men nearby deprive us.

A cloud of bounty with pouring spouts,

and a wind from it that blows unfailingly.

We were showered by its wandering north winds,

though before we were showered by the south wind.

From his rank and the bounty of his hands, we have

a gift whose streams of bounty are not withheld.

We have tested his two aspects; it matters not

whether you strike with Dhu al-Faqar or al-Rasub.

His ancestral honor rose high in a house of glory,

with few equals and no peer.

He traces descent in the fire's smokeless flame,

through mothers with unsullied bosoms.

The nobles of humankind and jinn passed on

their valor to Judharz and Bib.

Through it the non-Arabs stand tall when it is recounted,

and the tribes concede it to the nations.

And I never thought that in glory there would come a day

when your share of it would rise above mine.

Whenever I send the stray rhymes out to graze,

I turn them away from barren pasture.