في عنفوان الصبا ما كنت بالغزل — Alshaghouri

In the prime of youth I was not amorous;

How, then, should I yearn now, when my years are a middle-aged man's?

As though I, with my gray hair, blazing

In its whiteness, wore the black of coal-black, flowing hair.

Beautiful women consider gray hair uglier than

The blemish of whiteness ravaging the pupils' blackness.

I have never been immersed in the depths of love,

Nor have the censurers rebuked me with reproaches.

The least successful in endeavor is every deranged man

Who raves about someone whose heart is not deranged.

Whoever loves falls blindly into the depths of humiliation;

How different a grieving captive is from someone carefree!

The mirage of guile and tricks has never beguiled me,

Nor has the vine's wine afflicted me with madness.

The soul is full of longing, but it is restrained,

When it cranes upward, by an intellect firmer than a mountain.

Life is a shadow passing over a person,

And no shadow on earth is without movement.

The best thing you acquire from your world

Is knowledge—but only when adorned with action.

Never abandon piety one day, neglecting it

In sleep: you are neither abandoned nor left untended.

Ah, for someone awakened from the sleep of heedlessness,

To understand the learning of people of the earliest ages!

They are the ones who adorned the world with their excellence

And traded life's fresh finery for threadbare rags.

The world did not entice them with its ornaments,

Nor beguile them, in detail or in sum.

They said, 'Praise the great among mankind.' I told them,

'Fear of wasps deters me from the honey.'

Lions flee the biting of flies; how avid

The basest people are to assail noble masters!

Their shameful parts have defeated my glory—no wonder:

Amr turned Ali back in battle with his private parts.

If you lose patience with people all alike,

A noble man is not one to endure being harmed.

The cesspool of a torrent of excrement now toys with me;

He is Suha, restoring the sun in Aries.

This is well known of time; ever have

People of lofty merit been prey to the lowly's tongues.

Between the sound and the one-eyed—may they never be spared!—

There is a gulf: white eyes are not naturally dark-rimmed eyes.

Perdition to everyone drowning in his own faults

Who faults a trait in someone without a flaw!

My only fault is staying too long; whoever

Remains too long is assailed by boredom.

Helplessness imposed on me the humiliation of obscurity; had

I moved about, honor would have been in traveling.

I will strive to draw the bows of blame

And strike base men dead after my departure.

Never suppose the sun's light is weakened

By the clouds and dusk in which the sky is clothed.

I do not blame my envier for fabricating

Lies against me about what I neither did nor said.

Take it easy: the full moon in the sky, when

A dog overwhelms it with barking, pays no heed.

They are pack beasts bearing the weight of disgrace, hurrying along;

They are stronger at carrying it than camels.

Their driving song is abuse of them, in every wilderness

Where the most accursed roads are folded up and spread out.

They cannot conceal my lineage,

Which travels among people more widely than a proverb.

If I called, lions would surely answer me,

Rallying to a furnace blazing with war.

Whenever one of that company rides into battle dust,

The heroic horseman's head dismounts that day.

A people whose charge amid battle's terror makes you think them a

Torrent descending from a mountain's summit.

Accustomed to victory, their prowess is praiseworthy

While horses stumble over severed limbs and heads.

Providers of great food bowls when a northerly wind blows,

From which people seek provisions, barefoot and shod alike.

If I am pleased, they are pleased; if displeased, every one of them

Is like a lion baring its curved fangs.

If he faults me for being from Baniyas, how much

Life I have enjoyed in its verdant shade!

Its people are like sound dinars, without

Fraud, counterfeiting, or adulteration among them.

Pearls come from shells, and roses rise among

The thorns, and lush narcissus from bulbs.

Ah, how many fair women drew bright swords from

Black pupils, and swayed with the bends of slender spear-shafts!

Slender-waisted, with spotless mouths and thick

Hair, they forsook kohl for naturally dark-rimmed eyes.

Each with quivering buttocks: when rising,

Her sides complain of oppression from her rump.

Like suns from which clouds have cleared, when

They flirt with us from behind curtains and canopies.

Had Zulaikha's beauty been theirs, when

She was alone with Yusuf, the shirt would have been torn in front.

And a young gazelle, like the full moon, smiling to reveal

A mouth like pearls in a bright, evenly ordered necklace.

Whenever he sways and reveals his cheeks to us,

The ban-tree is abashed, and the rose is ashamed.

Red are his lips; drunken are his swaying sides;

His glance is unruly, like a drunken drinker.

He shoots and kills outright; his glances never merely wound

Our hearts: they outshoot the Banu Thu'al.

I withdrew my hand from them with chastity's restraint, without

Weakness befalling me, or fear, or dread.

And many verses delight their hearers with

Their meanings, free of error or foolish excess.

I strung them like gleaming necklaces of pearls,

Freeing their reciter from the bonds of being unadorned.

If God has advanced some people and held me back,

Even at its apogee the sun is lower than Saturn.

How could my soul find rest amid their jostling

Around a scant-watered well? Death is more restful for me.

I left the sea of poetry to people: let them come to drink;

I have been content with a trickle of water.

In the sea are pearls, as in the sky are

Stars: whoever seeks them grows weary and never reaches them.

I disdained greed that leads to moral filth

And loathed the humiliating garb of deprivation and hope.

Contentment has never shed its garments

Except upon a man—what a man indeed!

Preserve your face's dignity from the humiliation of begging, even if

Spilling it brings you wealth and servants.

Seek sustenance from God, from what is in His treasuries;

His overflowing favors grant you ascendancy, not abasement.

What God gives you, no one can withhold from you;

And nothing severed is joined.

Hold your nose high, away from greed's piercing; do not

Place it among submissive noses.

Their nose-tips fear being torn whenever they balk;

Humiliation drags them along, slowly and swiftly.

O soul, endure patiently what has afflicted you:

The freeborn endure when grave calamity strikes.

Time must yet seek pardon for its stumble

Against us and others; time has its changing fortunes.

O you who have drunk your fill, if you pledge, then

The craving is only for the thirsty among the spears.

I did not abandon the utterance of poetry through weakness,

Nor seeking the bounty of generous people through laziness.

But show me a generous man in this age, and whatever

Praise you desire, take its dictation from me.

Deposit, from my mouth, in the shells of your hearing

Pearls strung into poetry that is not plagiarized.

Whether you compose with care or improvise,

Here is the finest careful composer and improviser.

I held myself above it in proud refusal, scorning

It: neither my she-camel nor my camel has any part in it.

How could I seek hands to kiss

When severing them seems to me more fitting than kisses?

If a hand gives no gift to a praising poet,

Despite its wealth, may God strike it with paralysis!

Since I was found within it, time has never allowed

You to see me grazing in the pasture of joy.

I swear: if its calamities withdraw from me,

I will sing my hazaj songs and my ramal.

The fault of my poetry is that roses resemble it,

And most sons of this age are like dung beetles.

Never grieve over what you have not attained from the

World: livelihood is not gained through tricks.

God has ordained a livelihood for me that I will attain;

It is inevitable, just as my appointed death is inevitable.

Merit and wealth are both beloved; they never meet.

Does morning ever coincide with late afternoon?

The heart's innermost chamber shelters the secret of every man

Whose mind is firm; the loose-tongued have no judgment.

Beware of sitting with someone unlike yourself:

Wax burns only because of the wick.

Its home once lay on the summits of mountains;

Then it took fire in exchange for honeycomb and honey.

Companionship lies in a person's solitude, apart

From friends: abandon them, and do not care.

In your age, none to whom you give sincere affection

Among your friends is without hidden deceit.

O people who cast away eminence as they cast away

The brightest virtues in speech and deed!

As though, in their arrogance, they were Hanbalis

Who deem every man of letters a Mu'tazilite.

Had the Commander of the Faithful seen them, he would not

Have said, 'Follow this course, O Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali.'

Anyone praised among them foolishly says,

'Stand aside: my mind is unresponsive

To truth,' he says. And would you find him responsive

To praise, when he loves stinginess so fiercely?

The greatest liar among people in this age is their panegyrist:

So be silent. Their satirist is the truest, so speak.

In my view, none has risen in this age but a fool,

High in outward sight, but low within the heart.

How long, O Time, must I remain thirsty,

Without seeing you bring water to quench my burning thirst?

You deliberately turned your shield's back to me, and never

Showed me kindness; you have never ceased to be partial.

You have never stopped assailing the freeborn;

I have an example in the descendants of the Seal of the Messengers.