ذكرتنيك روحة للشمول — Albohtry

A breath of wine brought you to mind;

it kindled my thirst and stirred my burning longing.

Would that I knew, Ibn al-Mudabbir: will it draw

you near—my boundless hope and expectation?

Our last meeting is long past, save for a letter in reply

expressing longing [uncertain reading], or a messenger's report.

What has distracted you from Surr Man Ra'a,

and the deep, sheltering shade of life there?

Is it that you settle for Fadl's talk?

For he is disagreeable and full of idle chatter.

You were no easy prey for the lowly, nor was your soul

a match for the soul of a bore.

Why, then, have you chosen one whose fraud is plain,

whose tricks are stale and whose appeal is scant?

If you visit him, you find him more worn-out than the graying

of beautiful women, and the fading of deserted camps.

Going out at evening and morning, before dawn has risen,

he sets forth in darkness to beg and sponge.

And whenever he sets out in the morning seeking Ibn Nasr,

he returns from him with little bounty.

And so fares the importunate, persistent beggar when he latches

onto the bounty of a stubborn miser.

He claims a lineage which, if ever substantiated,

would make him a client of Abu al-Bahlul.

I have heard about him, though I did not believe it true,

that he disparages Kuthayyir and Jamil.

Woe to him! He surely says what corrupts the mind,

and makes a show of understanding and learning.

So whenever people dispute a meaning

from the clear or obscure passages of the Furqan,

he says, 'This is ours, and we have unraveled

its hidden meaning for questioner and respondent.'

Did al-Asma'i sire them, or al-Ahmar,

or were they impregnated with al-Khalil's cock?

Are they—may I never see them—anything but sons

of a puny little old man with a worn-out tool?

Most of his learning is probing who was the doer

among his two parents, and who was acted upon.