أناة أيها الفلك المدار — Albohtry

Patience, O revolving sphere!

Is what you snatch plunder, or bloodshed without redress?

You will perish like what you destroy, and decay

as you cause decay; vengeance will be exacted from you.

Calamities themselves are struck when they reach their height,

and destruction perishes in its own course.

And the dwellers in houses are nothing but riders,

their mounts are evening and early-morning journeys.

We have hopes that reach far into time,

which we hope to fulfill, and lives that are brief.

And how lightly calamities weigh upon a libertine,

who turns toward pleasures with no bridle!

So his day's end is drunkenness that reveals

its folly, and its beginning is a hangover.

And one day at al-Matirah, we were drenched

by a sky whose heavy downpour was wine.

We lodged in the house of al-Hasan ibn Wahb,

though his deserted dwellings had fallen into ruin.

We welcomed winter there, and visited

the daughters of pleasure, since their haunt was near.

We stayed, eating in snatched mouthfuls

there, and drinking in eager haste.

We passed the wine around while it was unmixed,

and rushed to drink the cooked wines while they were still fire.

And that was no folly, except that I

found that, among drinkers, solemnity was folly.

We were content, in place of Mukhariq and Ibn Khayr,

with the tamarisk's voice as the day rose high.

The north wind shook it, and there had gathered

upon its breaths tiny drops of rain.

On a cloud-dark morning, when the rain made

through the gardens a pilgrimage and a lesser pilgrimage.

As though the wind and the rain whispering

to the wind's thoughts were reproach and apology.

As though the Tigris's curve, when it gathered

in its entirety, were a crescent or a bracelet.

Indeed, by the father of Banu Har ibn Ka'b,

time has indeed driven them away, so they departed.

Time assailed the fortunes of the house of Wahb,

and night and day took their toll on them.

It lent them the cloak of glory, until

it demanded it back, so they returned what they had borrowed.

And as long as they lived, their faces were full moons

for a seeker of bounty, and their hands were seas.

And indeed, in the days' returning turns lies

healing for what their first onsets shattered.