Sol 6

  1. My two friends, pass with me by Umm Jundab.

    Let us satisfy the longings of my tormented heart.

  2. For if you grant me an hour

    of time, you will help me with Umm Jundab.

  3. Have you not seen me whenever I came at night

    find her fragrant, though she had worn no perfume?

  4. She is the choicest among her peers, without a fault,

    nor, if you look closely, is her figure ungainly.

  5. Would that I knew what has become of my bond with her,

    and how she tends the bond of one who is away.

  6. Does Umaymah still keep the affection between us,

    or has she yielded to the words of a mischief-maker?

  7. If you stay away from her for a while and do not meet her,

    you will learn what her actions have done to an experienced man.

  8. She said, 'When you are denied and met with excuses,

    it pains you; but if your passion is revealed, you grow practiced.'

  9. Look carefully, my friend: do you see the women in their litters

    taking a pass between the two ridges of Sha'bab?

  10. They rose beneath an Antioch-made covering over a saddle frame,

    like a cluster of palms or a garden in Yathrib.

  11. God bless the eyes of one who saw a parting

    more scattered and distant than the departure at al-Muhassab.

  12. One group of them crossed the valley floor of Nakhlah,

    and another crossed the high ground of Kabkab.

  13. Your eyes are like two buckets pouring into a channel

    as water flows through a sloping, open course.

  14. No boastful man could boast over you,

    weak though he was; nor could such a challenger overcome you.

  15. And you have never fulfilled a lover's longing

    by a journey out and back like this one.

  16. On a lean, long-striding reddish she-camel whose saddle frame

    seems set upon a piebald creature with pale flanks, no stranger to travel.

  17. It cries out in the hours before dawn, through every darkness,

    like the singing of a merry, excited drinking companion.

  18. A narrow-bellied four-year-old from the wild asses of Amayah,

    spitting out the tender tips of plants at every watering place.

  19. In a bend where desert trees stand among its growth,

    a passage for armies returning with spoils or disappointed.

  20. I have also set out early, while the birds were still in their nests

    and dew ran along every little watercourse,

  21. on a sleek horse that holds fast the wild game, its coat worn sleek

    by chasing their leaders across every distant stretch.

  22. Despite fatigue he surges on; his back seems,

    for all his leanness and running, like a hilltop tree.

  23. He races the swift-moving beast whose limbs gather under it;

    from afar his shape looks like the pole of a clothes rack.

  24. He has the flanks of a gazelle and the legs of an ostrich,

    and the broad back of a wild ass standing on a lookout height.

  25. He steps on hard, solid hooves that seem

    like stones in a thicket, coated with moss.

  26. His rump is like a sandhill packed down by dew,

    rising to a withers like a firmly built camel saddle.

  27. And an eye like a craftswoman's mirror, which he turns

    within its socket like an eye behind a veiled face covering.

  28. He has two ears in which his fine breeding is plain,

    like the listening ears of a startled doe amid the herd.

  29. His jaw is full and rounded, as though his rein

    and its doubled length were on the head of a trimmed trunk.

  30. And a dark, full tail whose central shaft

    is like the hanging clusters of a ripening date bunch.

  31. When he has run two lengths and his side grows wet,

    you would say the roaring wind had passed through a great tree.

  32. He swings a rounded haunch like a pulley, rising

    toward a slope like a firmly built camel saddle.

  33. He strains against his tether until it seems

    some passing irritation has seized him and will not leave.

  34. One day he pursues a herd with clean hides,

    and another a large-bodied mother of a young antelope.

  35. While wild cows graze in a lush grove,

    moving like maidens in fringed cloaks,

  36. our shouts rise as his bridle is fastened,

    and my companions say, 'They have gone ahead of you; pursue them!'

  37. Only with great difficulty do we mount our young man

    on the back of the tightly made, fine-backed horse.

  38. He rushes away like an evening rain squall

    as the animals emerge from rough ground with sloping earth.

  39. His legs flash, the whip gives a sharp stroke,

    and his urging has the force of a weary, impetuous creature.

  40. He catches up without tiring or slackening his pace,

    passing like a child's pierced spinning top.

  41. You can see mice in the shallow pools of the wide plain

    along the open desert track from his blazing speed.

  42. He drives the animals from their burrows as though

    an evening cloudburst had driven them out.

  43. He runs back and forth between a bull and a cow,

    and among vigorous young animals, one stout as a cut log.

  44. The bulls of the scattered herd keep bellowing

    as he presses them with the hardened spear.

  45. One falls upon its bare forehead, while another guards itself

    with a horn as sharp as the tip of a forked implement.

  46. We said to the noble young men, 'Come, dismount,'

    and they raised a spacious tent over us.

  47. Its pegs were Ma'di-made blades, and its poles

    were Rudayni spears bearing sharp points.

  48. Its ropes were the tethers of choice, light-footed camels,

    and its roof was made from long, spreading At-hami cloth.

  49. When we entered it, we rested our backs

    against every new, striped Hiri cushion.

  50. The eyes of the wild animals around our tent

    and our feet looked like agate that had not been pierced.

  51. We wipe our hands on the manes of our horses

    when we rise from golden-brown roasted meat.

  52. And we return at evening as though from Ju'atha,

    carrying the wild cows high between balanced loads and saddle packs.

  53. He returns like a buck among fresh pasture, shaking his head,

    troubled by an itch from dripping sweat.

  54. The blood of the leading animals upon his chest

    looks like henna juice staining gray hair.

  55. And when you see him from behind, his tail covers the gap between his legs,

    hanging thick just above the ground, with no reddish tinge.

Sol 6