أومض البرق بعلياء منين — Alshaghouri

Lightning flashed in the heights of Manin,

heralding victory and a manifest conquest.

Rise, my drinking companion, and pour me wine,

aged in the cask, season after season:

a daughter of the vine, like the sun's spittle, from

Ayn Halba it was bought, or from Adin.

Pass the cups, give us our morning draught, and do not

leave any wines of al-Andarin, my friend.

Among lions of a lair, hunted

with love at Ayn Hur by wide-eyed maidens,

with figures like supple spears,

beautiful in their straightness and suppleness,

and glances that are the spearheads of lances,

fitted when they were tempered in Shantarin,

piercing with the thrusts of those who

claimed allegiance to Mardanish or Tashfin;

and cheeks beside which the apples of

Lebanon, on their branches, are ashamed and sad;

and breasts like ivory caskets, when

filled with beads of precious pearl;

and loving maidens, doll-like yet grown fierce—

how much blood they have made flow from lovers!

When they tighten girdles around themselves,

they then undo the self-restraint of ascetics,

with eyes that did what

the Muslims' swords did on the day of Hittin.

The Franks were idols, and many

a monotheist turned upon them, striking with his right hand.

And a maiden who outshines the sun, upon

a bān-tree shoot above a mound of jasmine:

a doe—rather, an icon in the sanctuary of the

church, the Byzantines prostrate before her.

The bishop, as he brings her near, clutches

his heart, fearing that it may depart.

I cleave to monotheism in my love for her,

while she, in love, holds the polytheists' view.

And I shall seek the king's aid against her:

al-Amjad, fortunate in worldly life and in faith.

I ask the Creator to let him possess her,

then grant her to me; say Amen.

For he is well suited to justice, beneficence, and

generosity and fairness in judgment.

A king—rather, an angel—fashioned from light,

the light of the Throne, not from base fluid.

His poetry is admired, all of it,

while verse has both lean and fat.

Exalted be He who fashioned him a man,

one man in whom all the worlds reside.

His quivering spear has a fox within it,

made in battle to lap the aorta's lifeblood.

And in his right hand is a bowing sword,

descending on foes, who fall down prostrate.

With it he slays enemies and wild beasts,

wolves and lions of the lair.

Victory is his, despite his enemies,

wherever he heads, a companion and close friend.

The wine rejoices when he drinks it,

marveling at his sound, steadfast intellect.

If people were like him in drinking it,

its drinking would not be forbidden among the devout.

And it would become, both in worldly life and in

religion, an offering in its gatherers' hands.

And we would drink it openly, without fearing

eighty lashes, or forty.

He is a sultan: whenever he debates a man of

letters, he brings forth a manifest proof.

And a generous man, whose palm never touches

a flint-striker without its growing soft.

His forearm is the finest fire-stick ever kindled

for all the kings of the earth, one and all.

For if he struck water with pebbles,

he would kindle fire from flowing water.

The meadow encountered seas, and so

his kindling flared abundantly, time after time.

How strange that his pens have not

sprouted leaves, though held in his right hand!

He welcomes his delegation with his face's

glad promise of the radiance of dawn upon his brow,

after the sea of mirage had set dancing

their camel-ships amid its waves, as they journeyed.

O king, in whose praise

the praise-poets proclaim the certain truth:

the year has come to you in truth and in

earnest, riding the back of bright Saturday.