Sol 6.1

  1. I am Khindif's son and the defender of her honor.

    They have placed the sun and moon in my two hands.

  2. Even if you marched forth with Qays, I would scorn them,

    while you led horses and great camel herds against Tamim,

  3. and among them were two hundred thousand horsemen,

    and foot soldiers like night's dense darkness when it surged,

  4. they would then be a mouthful for Tamim, passing

    into a ravenous devourer's gullets when he gaped.

  5. Tamim spent the night with them in some compartments

    of his belly; he had eaten them for supper without noticing.

  6. O you who bark and howl to your own misery,

    come to me; I shall give you news of what you do not know:

  7. that Qays's snakes, if you advance with them,

    are water snakes; you will meet the male serpent,

  8. deaf, whose rocky height no snakes approach;

    and no living creature approaching him sees a trace.

  9. O Qays Aylan, I had indeed told you,

    O Qays Aylan, not to be quick to lose patience.

  10. Indeed, whenever I satirize a people, I leave them neither

    hearing, when they listen to my voice, nor sight.

  11. O Ghatafan, leave the pasture of a tar-treated she-camel,

    who infects healthy camels when her mange spreads.

  12. Pure tar cannot cure her spreading mange

    when it climbs up the necks and flares up.

  13. Had Ghatafan not been free of offenses

    against me, their men of sound judgment would have blamed Umar

  14. for his boldness against me when he shouted at me,

    from between the sun's setting-place and its horn as it broke forth.

Sol 6.1