هبيه لمنهل الدموع السواكب — Albohtry

Spare him for the downpour of streaming tears,

And gusts of longing playing in his breast.

And if not, turn a glance toward him: you will marvel

At what is in him—or pay no heed to marvels.

You turned away, though no foe's rancor had assailed love,

And departed, though no croaking raven had summoned separation.

So no shame if I despair: your abandonment has left me

Distraught; and if I am overcome, your love overcomes me.

I had not feared that my death would be

Your separation, nor was your bounty among my desires.

Now, by the faces of the horses, gaunt,

Stirring fine dust in the faces of battalions;

And by the dawn march of the dragon of the eastern lands, when he set out

And spread fire through the farthest western lands;

And by the crash of Ibn Yusuf's day, which resounded

From the Byzantines to all between al-Safa and al-Akhashib:

That heart was indeed the heart of a man at peace,

Though that garb was the garb of a warrior.

A breast like a desert: were a passage opened through it, not even

Sulayk of the raiding bands could traverse it alone.

He rushed forward until one who witnessed the battle asked:

“A meeting with enemies, or a meeting with loved ones?”

We kept calming him, though his resolve had encircled

The city of Constantine on every side.

Wait a while: the Deaf Pass is no easy route

To it, nor have the waters of the gulf dried up.

And by a thunderbolt in his palm, with which pour down

Five clouds upon the heads of his opponents;

Bounty from them almost overflows upon the foes,

With the sword, between two folds of spears and keen blades.

Now, by his son on the day of Ibn Amr, he indeed warded

From the faith a day with grimly frowning brows.

He twisted the neck of the torrent that descended clamoring,

To split a cavern among Lu'ayy ibn Ghalib's people.

He had marched against Amr ibn Ghanm ibn Taghlib,

As Ibn Wahb marched through the dust-cloud of Rasib.

I gave them a cup whose deadly draught had been served to them

By the one sharing your byname, in the earliest years gone by.

And you relieved the soul of the oppressor, when it had seen

Its death among the dancing swords.

You showed him mercy when the sword-edges swung

Over him, with Zayd divided between slain and fugitives.

And you held the sword back from him; its blade recoiled,

Blunted in its sting against him, its striking edges balking.

O Taghlib, you are not to us what we are to you,

Nor are matters between us at all comparable.

You blow as a crosswind against us, while our winds

Bring you fragrance from the north wind and southern breezes.

And how many of Muhammad's favors have you denied—

Stars in clouded darkness, of lavish gifts and bounties!

And bounty whose downpour none claim to rival—

When he gives, not even the hearts of pouring clouds.

Did you not dwell in his shade and find

A request granted and a seeker's wish fulfilled?

Did you not come to him when he was brimming full, so that

Your buckets in his sea were nothing strange?

And his servant is screened from you, while he himself stands forth,

You commune with him eye to eye, with no chamberlain.

And he visits you at dawn, acting as his own scribe,

While his bounty goes at dawn to a thousand scribes.

He surely cleared the blackness from those faces,

And poured rain into those pallid palms.

Yes, there is a sword whose edge no

Tyrant's injustice or usurper's seizure can overstep.

Your anger is for it; beyond it, all is contentment,

And your desire is to lose these desirable blessings.

God's hand was above your hands, which

Intended against him what lay in false conjectures.

So he came like dawn, clearing away a mist

Of tyranny from a face of delicate contours.

Piety is ushered forth from his bearing and his ascendancy by

The calm of one vanquished and a victor's return.

He let pardon flow for you; you saw your sins

As flotsam upon it, while it filled the watercourses.

Nor did he rend from you the flank-flesh exposed

To the assault of his nails and claws.

And what occurred did hold anger for the angry,

And agitation for the agitated, and reproach for the reproachful.

And in his pardon, if you but knew, lies a punishment

That rattles reputations, even if he does not punish.

And had he trampled you with horses, the trampling of an angry man,

You would have flown as dust above the mute battalions.

I counseled you—if counsel had any place

With a listener absent from the place of understanding—

Warning you against him, bringing you glad tidings of him;

And in these two things I speak no liar's word.

So if you ask him for war, he will grant it freely to you:

A generous giver who counts war among his gains.

A rider on the necks of affairs: if one road leads

You aside, he will have many roads.

He advanced toward you with the stride of a mighty lion, while you

Creep in ignorance as scorpions creep,

Toward one silent in his plotting; had he no

Innate gift for scheming, experience would suffice him.

He knows what lies beyond consequences, if

His deliberation travels—let alone what lies within consequences.

And a polisher of judgments, he spends the night laboring over them,

And sharpens them as knives are sharpened for calamities.

He scorches like thunderbolts set ablaze

By thunder, and swoops like falling stars.

We found the crescent of the flatlands auspicious, with Abu

Sa'id, and time's vicissitudes caused no unease.

We fastened the bonds of our hopes and expectations

To the most generous companion and the bravest friend.

He restored poetry's unity, while poetry was the most wayward of

Wayward things, rejected, the strangest of strange things.

So he gathered its far-flung reaches to himself, certain

That its rhymes are threads for noble deeds.