Sol 6.1

  1. To you I came in person, when only a last spark of life remained,

    on an exile's camels, forever driven to a hard march.

  2. The stretch between al-Jiwa and Duma folded them up,

    and their riders, as cloaks of striped cloth are folded.

  3. On Shadani she-camels, whose heads seem

    like axes as they go, shuddering with fatigue.

  4. When, with their hurried riders, they followed in succession

    the tracks of a road with smiling ascents through the passes,

  5. they battered their leather sandals until they seemed

    scraps of cotton rags around their fetlocks.

  6. To reach you, we gnawed away their humps with their saddles,

    and every scrap of flesh in joint and spine.

  7. Travel wore them down until they turned

    black with exhaustion, after being tawny 'Idi stock.

  8. And riders swaying from night travel—you would think

    they were given wine, the daughter of years, passed round among drinkers.

  9. Now swaying with them, now setting them upright,

    while beneath us the camels were like arrow shafts cut from branches.

  10. They carried every weighty need

    to you, upon their wasted humps and hunched backs.

  11. To the best destination, whose bounty people seek,

    toward whom riders gather from the horizons;

  12. to the door of one besides whom we sought no other

    in the east or west of the spacious earth;

  13. to where kingship stretched the ropes of its tent

    over the son of Abu al-A'yas, in the spacious dwelling.

  14. When the earth beholds him, it seems to remain

    trembling, abashed before the imam in terror.

  15. Leave everyone aside save the caliph's son: he

    is enough for me among men, if you bring me to his land.

  16. No frightened man will ever meet his like,

    whether he comes to him travelling over water or land.

  17. By the right of a ruler whose lineage joins Yusuf

    and Abu al-'Asi and Abu Harb,

  18. Islam is strengthened through him, after its guardian,

    his father; thus the faith's rift has been healed.

  19. Noble sires—Abu al-'Asi is their father—seem,

    when armored, like stiff-necked, tarred, mangy camels.

  20. The charge of the second of two, after Muhammad:

    the blows of noble men, neither unarmed nor disabled.

  21. I turned in person, when I feared an engulfing calamity,

    to you—though I have no guilt, O son of Marwan;

  22. to the stronghold men seek in fear from every side,

    to it, and to the rain that brings relief from drought.

  23. You healed Iraq of sickness, just as

    God's hand, through the Criterion, healed the heart's disease.

  24. He is the chosen one for guidance, after the two chosen ones,

    and by descent belongs to the caliphal house and close kin.

  25. Among a people whose father is Abu al-'Asi, their swords

    are strongholds when battle comes to blows.

  26. I saw the sons of Marwan freed

    by their swords from the tight confines of distress.

  27. And on champions you recognize the impact of their swords,

    and their traces in scars and deep gashes.

  28. And a howler howled until his howling roused

    a father of two, in his lair amid thick-necked lions.

  29. Was there no barker among Qays ibn 'Aylan,

    to bark for them, other than a dog's lapping-bowl?

  30. And for them, when the dog howled in their defense,

    Jarir was against them like the bleating of a camel-calf.

Sol 6.1