ماست كخوط البانة المياس — Alshaghouri

She swayed like the swaying branch of a bān tree,

and gazed at me with the glance of a white gazelle in its covert.

But she recoiled with a recoil that alarmed me,

when the streaks of gray upon my head alarmed her.

Slender-waisted: in my heart her jewelry’s chime

is many times the whisper it gives forth.

Rosy-cheeked, Harut-like

in her glances, musk-scented in her breath.

She smiles to reveal bright pearls, neatly strung,

her lips sweet, untouched by anyone.

And her steps, as she walks, set swaying

a curving dune, wondrously soft, not hard.

She walks, dragging behind her, from her hair,

thick tresses like a black snake that does not bite.

She said: I see youth’s dwelling deserted,

after it had once been a place of companionship.

Gray hair’s onslaught has turned you away from youth,

until you shook out your passion with the saddlecloths.

So I answered her: into its arena never stepped

my foot, nor did my horses gallop there.

But I am enamored of sipping the pure vintage of

letters, not wine in a cup.

There is no good in one who, in his lifetime, drinks

anything that strips a sober man of his merit.

Shall I play the youth, when white thughām has sprouted at my hair’s parting?

No indeed, when the strength of my cords has been stricken.

Fifty shoved me in the back toward

sixty, and thereby my molars crumbled.

And I grew as weak as a two-year-old camel, though I was, in

youth’s prime, like a huge, full-grown camel.

Nothing remains of me but the remnants of a span

that has stretched out comfort’s hand in gentle coaxing.

Whoever enters death’s battlefield meets the fangs

of calamities above a mighty breast.

And time’s sediment settles in its latter days

for those who live long in it: it is like a cup.

Indeed, I have taken off the garment of wantonness,

and learned that earnestness is the finest garment.

And earnestness is praise of the pure judge, Zaki

al-Din wa-l-Dunya, Abu al-Abbas.

O son of those of whom time has testified

that, after the caliphs, they are its finest people.

Affairs, when their wounds draw complaints

from fierce kings, have no healer but you.

Through your learning and forbearance, you subdued,

as you tamed them, every unruly thing.

And time obeyed your command, and has struck

your enviers with humiliation and ruin.

And by sound judgment you attained what could not be

attained with armor by the lions of fierce battle.

Damascus was envied for your residence there

by Baghdad, itself the protected domain of the Abbasids.

You are the one who, by his deeds and words,

in his judgments, has eclipsed the brilliance of Iyas.

If his fingertips scatter precious pearls,

he strings them with pens upon the paper.

In his eloquence and fingertips are two spells of

speech and script that dazzle the gathering.

Never before him have we seen a jeweler

who fashioned pearls from ink upon a page.

O you who rival him, you have indeed hoped

to face the sun’s radiance with a lamp.

Expert in the rulings of sacred law, a knight

in the twin arenas of textual authority and sound analogy.

From a spreading Qurayshi, Umayyad tree,

firmly rooted in the heart of al-Batha.

So it is as though his petitioner were Zuhayr praising

Harim, who thus led him away from destitution.

And his envier resembles a little dog when it falls

upon its forepaws and mouth, struck down by a lion’s paws.

If I am to Muhyi al-Din a cast-off thing,

forgotten, his son does not forget me.

My prayer for them both, and my praise of them,

recur as breaths recur.

And I am worthy, for my fine praise of them both

of old, of what was once due to Shas.

May they never part from prosperity, for with them

it is built upon age-old foundations—

as long as water remains in Yazid and in the moist earth of

Thawra, and in Barada, and in Banas.

May you be blessed with a year whose hours have arrived,

and their faces are clothed in light from you,

like Qur’an copies whose pages are adorned

with the splendor of ten-verse and five-verse markers.