Sol 5.6

  1. They despaired of anyone among you catching up with them,

    though riders had already driven them over winding, hump-backed ridges.

  2. How many a man afraid of me have I left unharmed,

    and at another I have hurled a shooting star.

  3. And many illustrious, celebrated poems have I composed,

    soaring forth—poems you cannot answer in kind.

  4. They reached the sun where she stands in the east,

    and the setting-place of her rim, where it vanishes.

  5. At every mountain pass and every frontier post,

    their rare strains unmistakably proclaim their pedigree.

  6. And at al-Naqā my maternal uncle left Ibn Laylā—

    Abū al-Ṣahbāʾ—digging up a blaze.

  7. Ruin was ruin enough for him, O sons of Tamīm,

    and my uncle made him carrion for foxes and wolves.

Sol 5.6