إستقبلا الركب في أطلالهم وقفا — Albohtry

You two, meet the caravan at their ruined dwellings, and halt,

though their surviving traces have worn away with age and vanished.

The dwellings will not let me refuse grief; whenever

I recover from it through forgetfulness, they break me anew with longing.

People crane their necks at my wailing, while

their howdahs have crossed the hills of the valley bend from Sharafā.

Within the curtained chambers are full moons that seldom rise

without the full moon's light dying away or being eclipsed.

Divided between well-formed hips

that summon desire, and waists refined to slenderness.

In youth I used to lament my enduring love for her;

now, in middle age, I hope she will treat me fairly.

I have a heart that, when I restrain its longing,

rebels, and tears that flow whenever I wipe them back.

In my lovesickness I nearly give death my hand,

whenever the doves cry upon their branches.

None has known fire with its blaze fiercely kindled

who has not harbored passion beneath the folds of his breast.

Will a replacement return for my squandered youth,

which I spent extravagantly on love's desires?

God bless our days—how beautiful they were,

if only time had halted instead of passing away!

Do not deceive yourself: the world will not restore

the worldly pleasures that are lost and all that has passed.

Were it not for the emir, Ibn Safwan, and his favors,

our days would never have grown so gentle and clear.

Boundlessly generous, he reaches toward eminence with a hand

whose wont wins him both the withheld and the freely granted.

If the rain fails, or its promising cloud proves barren,

his two hands make up to us for its downpour.

Keen of sword when a sword's edge glances off,

steadfast of heart when a coward's heart falters.

Master of resolve: were he to challenge, with the least of his resolves,

the hilltops of Radwa, they would surely quake.

Ask Sulaym about him, when their fool acted foolishly

for a time, and the evil of his deeds overtook him.

Their doom was to overstep in rebellion; they were left

by their excess as targets for the spearpoints.

They came at you, their fool driving them toward destruction,

bringing them forward and closer to rebellion.

Each day, the points of the brown spears are leveled,

milking out blood that drips upon their hindquarters.

You rained blows upon their heads, and with them left

their heirloom brown spears bent and shattered.

Each blow brings down the close-wrought helmet, sheared apart

by its impact, and plunges through the supple mail.

As if the blows of Indian swords swimming

through their skulls were a fire stoked from below with palm fronds.

How many of them lie slain outright, their breastbones bleeding,

or caught fast, shuffling in the bonds of captivity!

Woe to them! Had they sought shelter in anything but obedience,

they would have summoned a crashing storm-cloud of might.

Your father put out war's fire when it bared its teeth,

hideous, with keen, curved fangs.

He filled al-Jazira with widespread justice and bounty

overflowing; both dispelled oppression's darkness, and it vanished.

Thus, after its gladness had ebbed away, it became

through his justice and bounty a fresh, ungrazed meadow.

He left no central district of it in fear,

nor any border, but enfolded each in safety.

O champion of the faith, may God reward your striving on behalf of

peoples who were on the brink of perishing utterly.

You drew, in defense of Islam's sons, a sword of battle

that cured their breasts of rancor and brought healing.

You put out their enemies' fire against them, already blazing,

and drove death's fang away from them, already gnashing.

Until, when guidance's pillars began to lean,

and justice shook at every edge and faltered,

you advanced, seeking God's aid and championing

God's cause, zealously guarding His faith in proud indignation.

When he saw you through the blackness of his battle-dust,

driving through it a thunderous cloud of death,

he fled, while your horsemen sought him beneath the night,

clinging to the Romans' ropes of protection, wandering astray.

If he escapes, routed and galloping, already

the spears have trodden both sides of his shoulders and his nape.

If you have straightened the faith's spear-shaft until it stands true,

and see in it neither bend nor crookedness,

among you there has always been a fortress to shelter in,

when death's dust-storm rages among young warriors.

To you Nizar cast the loop of her rein,

willingly, and her people were brought into unity.

Without your defense, the kingdom would have been trampled,

the people divided, and all affairs at odds.

God bless you, the millstone of a blazing battle,

when spears bleed with the last drippings from throats.

When the faith's affliction lingered, it could find

no cure for that affliction except through your sword.

As for those seeking bounty, they have laid down their staffs

where gifts are prompt and generosity extravagant.

They saw you as the most open-handed of men, and their strongest

cave of refuge, their gentlest shelter for a seeker of bounty.

Your spacious courtyard, when they alighted there, was never

a cramped lodging, nor was your bounty scant.

When men exchange accounts of noble deeds,

you overwhelm them in nobility or surpass them in honor.

Through you, the destitute and deprived have become glad,

aided against time, and the wronged have gained redress.

Through your bounty, the days have drawn back,

from my courtyard, and time's reversals have turned away.

Your generosity alone suffices me; I draw on it

against calamities when they crowd together—and it is enough.