1. Greet the dwellings at Aqil, then at al-An'um,

    like writing on the parchment of a book with dotted letters.

  2. A ruined campsite: winds draw night-traveling rainclouds across it,

    and dark rainclouds from al-Simak al-Mirzam.

  3. Every dark, raining cloud has effaced the dwellings,

    or every gale whose pebbles fly.

  4. You have ended the desire you fulfilled,

    yet with the departing women remains a desire unresolved.

  5. Gentle wild cows, never caught off guard

    by archers' arrows or a hunter's spears.

  6. They disappointed every love-stricken man they fed with hopes,

    and shunned the place of the captive enslaved by love.

  7. The hated man indeed has places among us,

    unlike the place of the honored lover.

  8. What glimpse can you gain when she places before it

    the loose fold of her cloak, shielding herself with her wrist?

  9. Indeed, I have crossed unknown wastes and watering places,

    whose pools of stagnant water were the color of red dye.

  10. And when the collared bird laid eggs in their reaches,

    its broken eggshells were taken for shards of glazed earthenware.

  11. Al-Walid is indeed a caliph succeeding a caliph;

    he raised the edifice upon the mightiest edifice.

  12. Thus the edifice you exalted rose high,

    and yours are the broad beds of every brimming valley.

  13. How many a vast desert I have crossed to reach you,

    trackless and unmarked, its night like a pathless wilderness.

  14. And I left the swift Mahri camel crawling,

    after its stout strength and massive, sturdy-girt build.

  15. Al-Walid is indeed the chosen imam;

    his banner was waved with victory and spoils.

  16. The Lord of the Throne ordained that you should be caliph.

    You were made ruler: rise upon the pulpits and remain safe.

  17. He inherited reins and spearheads, and traced his lineage

    to a house of nobility whose stairway rises high.

  18. I have seen buildings fall vacant and collapse,

    but the edifice of your throne endures, never demolished.

  19. He forsook flight and settled where stood impregnable

    his ancestral thickets; and to every virtue he belongs.

  20. Creation knows that every caliph

    from a branch of your stock is like a prized breeding camel.

  21. He pierced noses and led every tribe,

    hard to lead himself, a tail-lashing stallion never nose-bridled.

  22. Al-Walid and his sons stand together

    like the full moon encircled by shining stars.

  23. Indeed, you mounted an assault against the Christians

    at whose impact the mountains of Daylam trembled.

  24. The church's edifice was indeed demolished

    by force, and that was a defeat for al-Akhram.

  25. So your Lord showed you, when you broke their cross,

    the light of guidance; you knew what we did not know.

  26. And when the battalions raised their standards,

    they seemed like noble birds circling.

  27. He butted their heads with his own, and they scattered

    away from it, while its skull-bones stayed uncrushed.

  28. A crushing stone in war when wars burst into flame,

    and life-giving rain when the tent-poles of the famine-bound multiply.

  29. I am among those drawing their share from your brimming buckets,

    which gush from the midstream of the mighty Euphrates.

  30. I hope for the foremost favors of one among them rich in bounty,

    and fear the onslaught of a mighty lion with cubs.

  31. I complain to you; you may well shield me from

    time's bite and the burden of an indebted man's debt.

  32. The realm's dry land is subdued; its tribute is gathered for you,

    and the sea is subdued through ships afloat.

  33. You see the serving-bowls fed by the cutting of camel-humps,

    as channels are replenished by a brimming flood.

  34. And the cauldron growls with backbone-joints and heaves

    with ribs, rumbling like a black stallion.

Sol 6.1