Sol 6.1

  1. I saw the sons of Marwan, their dominion raised high

    by young kings like lions, and their gray-haired elders.

  2. Through them God united prayer, and so

    its peoples came together after discord.

  3. And he who inherited the two wooden emblems and the signet—

    his are sovereignty and the earth's broad, open reaches.

  4. He was a rope for them, with which they tightly lashed

    a bucket's crossbars, its full measure having overflowed

  5. onto the earth; whichever of their kings dips it,

    its well flows freely like the dark Euphrates.

  6. My mounts carry me back and forth between Medina and the city

    toward which the repentant hearts of humankind hasten.

  7. It is the first city, and every city

    is her child; whoever answers her traces descent to her.

  8. In the stillness of night, my mounts remain choice-bred,

    toward a man before whom I am set down; their calf-bereft females yearn.

  9. None has endured what I endured except my companions

    and riding-camels whose weariness is never relieved.

  10. They brought you a people, for whom no grazing beast was left

    by successive years of relentless drought.

  11. And a vast, empty land—its steppes hurled us from afar

    toward you, with the tawny Mahri camels,

  12. bearing men who made the night above their saddles

    a mountain there; their camels' trot had become a walk.

  13. Toward you, with worn-out riders on every worn-out she-camel,

    each with its noble woman and noble man bundled together.

  14. I saw the loops of the rear-straps and girths draw together

    against their peppercorn teats, from ceaseless toil.

  15. As though great ships rode above every hardy she-camel,

    their aged she-camels bridling it in the mighty surge of water.

  16. I tell my companions, now that truth has been told them

    by even the liar among the souls that lost heart:

  17. Perhaps, by the hands of the best of creation, there will be lifted

    from us the calamities of these dust-dark hardships.

  18. When my soul is reminded of Marwan's son, my companion,

    and of Marwan, my eye's buckets overflow with water.

  19. Those two protected me when I fled to them,

    as the hills' ravines sheltered their mountain goats.

  20. I did not stir until the man I feared had died,

    and the timid soul's pounding was quieted.

  21. And has my call, after Marwan and his son,

    anyone to answer it, now that both have left it?

  22. And whenever I feared or sought a favor,

    their hands' generous bounty to me sufficed.

  23. With the ways of hands that feed others, when the east wind

    pours down cold, not water, in its outpouring.

  24. I saw the sons of Marwan when the staff was split,

    and the curs of recurrent war snarled.

  25. They soothed the wronged man's wrath, and to them clung

    men's hands, whose rebelliousness was forcibly quelled.

  26. You inherited, along with his virtues, prompt hospitality,

    and striking the hamstrings of full-grown camels with calves.

  27. You saw the sons of Marwan: their dominion was secured

    by sound counsel, whose close adviser was among them.

  28. May God reward with good such a caliph of a people,

    when, after a rain-star's setting, the wind blows from the south.

  29. He spared the unlettered Prophet's community every relentless calamity

    of time, whose harsh privation was feared for us.

  30. Perhaps the anguish of this hardship will be driven away

    by rain from Hisham falling upon it over us,

  31. just as, when he came to them with his household, most thirst-quenching was

    the brimming bucket of Quray' for Hutay'a of Abs.

  32. So grant me a brimming bucket from your buckets, to water me

    and my family, when the thirsty herds have circled long.

  33. And how often Hisham's two hands have favored a man

    with a verdant blessing for which no repayment is sought.

Sol 6.1