Sol 6.1

  1. Are you leaving me, or bent on tormenting me,

    and reproaching me for love, even if it disgraces me?

  2. Umar of the fair women has clearly shown, at close hand,

    a wrong done to a lover who is not loved.

  3. When they find a pretext for rejecting him,

    they shield the young men from his resentment with gray hair.

  4. Can flight deliver you from the white antelopes' disdain—

    the flight of one harried and overtaken by the first signs of gray?

  5. They bend him from his upper parts into a stoop,

    as a straightening tool bends the reed shafts it runs along.

  6. Or is there composure in love that is not made foolish

    by longing, or consolation that is not overcome?

  7. In my pursuit of fair women I fulfilled—though

    they outstripped me—a need in Jacob's soul.

  8. I have never seen a grazing herd like these skittish, unbranded

    little sheep, left unguarded against the wolf.

  9. I brave hardships: either they bring me my goal

    in what I send forth, or perfect my discipline.

  10. If you seek, you milk the teats of affairs; and if

    you abide with Time, you hear of marvels.

  11. And a dusky expanse, where the mirage meets you,

    white-robed after its duskiness.

  12. When its air lies open to the wind, sweeping across,

    it speaks with the pale gazelles, or moans with the old she-camels.

  13. A deep sea of mirage, with no ships

    but mature, untamed camels of Ghurayri stock.

  14. Like dusky sandgrouse, except when

    a smear of night turns them black, jet-black.

  15. When Suhayl appears, they set out at evening from a blaze

    kindled and burning along the horizon's rim.

  16. And I have raised—never lowering it in fear—

    the staff of satire against men of doom and sin.

  17. When I praised them, they were, by the falsest things

    they promised, the people most likely to give me the lie.

  18. Until it became known of me, without any apology,

    that I kept clear of all but my own people and turned aside.

  19. Toward Abu Ja'far our riding camels waded

    through the perils of a night whose wilderness was dreadful and feared.

  20. Our hopes fasten, through him, upon a king

    whose lineage is traced again and again through pure glory.

  21. His gate is thronged, whether he admits select guests

    or stays secluded, beyond the envoys' sight.

  22. We go at dawn toward a summit of glory, lofty in

    station, or a proverbial example of generosity.

  23. When he appears as Zayd al-Khayl, he joins him

    with Hatim of bounty, a cleft most firmly mended,

  24. until High Honor decks him with her necklaces,

    with both names and honorific titles of her own.

  25. He is their brightest in a storm-cloud's lightning-flash,

    pouring rain, and their truest in a downpour's force.

  26. If he lives beside the Nile, he rivals the Nile and outstrips it;

    or settles at al-Sib, we visit the master of bounty.

  27. A radiant lord, he owns the country's far reaches: some

    reserved for a day's bounty, others given away.

  28. I was pleased while still unversed in his kindness,

    and grew still more pleased with him after experience.

  29. Traits like rain-clouds traveling by night, looming

    over the lands at dawn and at evening.

  30. They shoulder a burden that cannot be borne

    by the necks of broad-bellied, swift, long-limbed camels.

  31. In every land and among every people, from his clouds

    comes a torrent of favor after another torrent.

  32. How much largesse he has scattered among the settled folk of the Two Rivers,

    cast upon the settled folk of the Two Rivers in a flood!

  33. He fills his panegyrists' mouths with ancestral honor

    reckoned above the two Simak stars and the two Eagle stars.

  34. Noble qualities turn their faces straight toward him,

    as the House is sought as the goal through prayer niches.

  35. Endowed with glory, he gains yet more through his desire,

    which follows a course and manner of his own,

  36. like an eye insatiable for beauty, pursuing it,

    and a nose seeking the utmost height of fragrance.

  37. He never ceases drawing my sword, for battle and hospitality,

    against bleeding shoulders and hocks.

  38. I rejoiced at Ijl's recovery from hostility to him,

    after what it had gathered as firewood from his ruinous wrath.

  39. They went with the people, where the people flock

    within his bounty, subjects and dependents alike.

  40. Had Banu Shayban refrained from opposing him, then

    they would not have borne the stroke of a sharpened, double-edged blade.

  41. Their shunning him only led them further astray,

    and their distance from his favor brought only ruin.

Sol 6.1