قليل لها أني بها مغرم صب — Albohtry

It is little enough for her that I am enamored of her, lovesick,

And that my heart has known nothing but longing for her.

I offered appeasement until her anger ended;

Yet the maker of false grievances still reproaches after being appeased.

I have seen nothing like love, whose deception has ensnared

The discerning among men, even after love had been tested.

And I long for the apparition, and seek frequent

Visits from a phantom whose visits come at intervals.

How can I be lovesick after my hair has grayed, and after

The man untouched by love swore that the gray-haired do not yearn?

Are they robbing me of fair consolation, or making me fear

For my endurance—those tracts of sand and dunes?

I was content to be alone in my passion, and did not wish

The caravan to halt with me at the dwelling.

Had I had companions the evening I was overcome

By the flowing tears of my eyes, my companions would have rebuked me.

The talebearer has indeed severed, by fabricating what he spread

In speech, what the keen, cutting sword cannot sever.

So I found myself in Baghdad: the shade was not ample,

Nor was life tender and moist in its luxuriance.

Am I to praise the tax-district officials, seeking favor

From them, while I have ample enjoyment in Syria?

But little hope is there of a caravan to carry a message

To Syria—unless letters bear it.

And with Abu al-Abbas, were he near,

Lie the expanses of an accessible courtyard and a spacious refuge.

My departure from him proved a trial; and wealth—

A lifetime's wealth—is the least he gives or bestows.

And he has resources for calamities; by means such as these

Gloom is lifted from us, and distress is warded off:

Swords that bring death to the lives of all enemies,

And horses that take plunder in the dwellings of all enemies.

They climbed above Baghras, and what they wrought constricted

Men's breasts, when the pass grew cramped with them.

Their judgment returned to them, and they realized,

Too late, that their mount was unruly.

They were Thamud of al-Hijr, doomed to suffer

The descent of punishment; the eunuch was their camel calf.

He bent toward them in kindness, while the watering places were easy to reach,

And relieved them after the crisis had grown intractable.

Had his two testicles been present, they would have risen

To his kidneys when terror jolted him.

Thus he is nothing but pardon, whose rain reaches all,

Or the sword, its striking edges bare, never glancing off.

No people who kindled a fire of rebellion doubted,

When you marched against them, that their fire would die down.

As though they had not seen Sima al-Tawil and his host,

And what war did to him and to his host.

And outside Bab al-Bahr stood lions of Khafiyya,

While the pen had shut both its sides upon the sheep.

He wavered between his two choices; then life became dear

To him, its water poured out in draught after draught.

And the escape he sought was barred by thick

Necks of men, stout in defense of what they guarded.

He loathed the taste of death, while the sword gripped

The throat of war's lion—a dog in reality.

Had he been noble of soul, as life turned away,

He would have died with the taste of death sweet in his mouth.

Had Lu'lu' not kept his distance by fleeing,

The spear's point would have made a hole in Lu'lu'.

He crossed the earth's breadth, riding headlong,

So distance might safeguard what nearness would surrender.

He loves the land when it is his body's place of rising,

And dreads it when, above him, it is his place of setting.

When he crosses a plain, by noon it becomes his enemy,

Though that same plain had been his friend in the morning.

Forsaken men—the disgraces of their weakness were not concealed

By loyalty, nor did tumult sustain their treachery.

I fear as though I bore, for some of them, the burden

Of sin, or as though I were an ally to some of them.

Yet I have no offense whose punishment I should fear,

And I hope for your pardon, even if I have offended.