Sol 5.6

  1. Has this Time, then, no diversion

    but humankind—doing with them whatever it wills?

  2. It has never ceased to be directed against me and given power,

    assailing me in my misery with fang and crushing breast.

  3. It found my weapon intact, and so borrowed it

    to rob me of my life—O Māl ibn Ḥanẓal.

  4. If my appointed day has now drawn near—as I believe it has—

    like a water-bound she-camel coming one day upon no watering-place,

  5. lured by the empty waste and sunlit open, and moving on

    toward a straight, clearly marked track like the Milky Way—

  6. before me both Khālids died:

    the chief of Banū Ḥujwān and the son of al-Muḍallal;

  7. and ʿAmr ibn Masʿūd, and Qays ibn Khālid;

    and the horseman of Raʾs al-ʿAyn, Salmā ibn Jandal.

  8. Time’s agencies destroyed ʿĀd and brought low

    a guarded mighty man, sung to atop an upper chamber;

  9. a noble songstress, husky in song, would sing to him

    in a mellow voice or a measured melody.

  10. There at night, the bondwomen never left their cauldrons empty,

    when the Star reached them at evening on a north wind.

  11. And how many a loudly twanging, resonant bow we broke

    against the foe, amid the clash of broad-bladed arrows.

Sol 5.6