Sol 6.1

  1. Perhaps the tribe's departure is bent on parting from me,

    at dusk beside Ruhayl's solitary hills.

  2. By the lives of the beauties, they have not repaid my yearning

    for them, nor the artful weaving of poems.

  3. How many a faithful friend they have cut off,

    and tempted many a worshipper firmly grounded in faith.

  4. For that woman, on the day at al-Hamamah, stirred desire

    in a penitent's heart, bowing down to God.

  5. I have seen the beauties beguile a lover

    with lovely hopes, yet prove stingy at their trysts.

  6. Long indeed have they captured hearts with eyes,

    and slender limbs that grace their anklets and armlets.

  7. Are you excused if you reveal, after steadfast endurance,

    signs of love both new and long-held?

  8. We seek affection from you; if we could gain it,

    it would be among our dearest gains.

  9. So do not couple talk of faults, to withhold your favor

    from us, with the estrangement of the haughty and aloof.

  10. When you visit the beauties leaning on a staff,

    they wish you black serpents' blood to drink.

  11. I refrain from the neighbor whose dwelling is near,

    and seek the long cords of far-off ambitions.

  12. Indeed, there was an ailment in Iraq; they found no

    physician who healed their ills like Khalid.

  13. He healed them with gentleness mingled with forbearance and piety,

    and the conduct of a rightly guided man intent on truth.

  14. For the Commander of the Faithful has endowed you

    with one discerning in religion, an ornament of the mosques.

  15. And we truly hope you will join a company

    who will be the first to enter Paradise.

  16. For Ibn Abd Allah is known for

    stands that bring him no shame at public assemblies.

  17. So he proved his trustworthiness to the Commander of the Faithful,

    and proved to him his truthfulness in difficult affairs.

  18. When people sought to wrong him,

    he rejected oppression and defied every leader.

  19. And how can anyone seek something you have forbidden?

    He would fall between the fangs of enraged lions.

  20. If the enemies combine their plans in a plot

    for treachery, God shields you from the schemer's plotting.

  21. You prepare coats of iron together with lances,

    and shaggy-forelocked steeds, like hunting hounds in pursuit.

  22. When you meet your adversary in the arena of battle,

    he breathes through a gushing wound, its blood flowing unstaunched.

  23. And if Satan beguiles those who stray,

    they meet from you a war whose heat never cools.

  24. When there is safety, your heart is faithful,

    and when there is fear, you are the wisest defender.

  25. You have never ceased aspiring to noble deeds and eminence,

    and building glory whose wellsprings shine brightly.

  26. When the days of noble deeds are counted, take pride

    in your lofty forefathers, long of arm.

  27. So how many a builder you have whose building stands tall,

    and how many an orator and envoy in the house of Sa'b.

  28. Their remembrance delights you in the days at al-Muhassab,

    and at the station of the garlanded sacrificial animals.

  29. You hold a place on the summits among Ma'add's two tribes,

    and in Yemen, highest in noble birth.

  30. With branches and a root from Bajilah upon the heights,

    back to the son of Nizar, who was an uncle and a father.

  31. You guarded the Muslims' frontiers and did not neglect them,

    and have always been a chief, a leader, and a leader's son.

  32. For you have been granted victory over the foes,

    and become a light whose radiance never dies.

  33. You built a structure whose like no one has built,

    its wall almost rivals the Farqad stars.

  34. And you have been granted what eluded generations past,

    so we praise a generous giver, master of praiseworthy deeds.

  35. Surely what you have spent shows resolve and strength,

    so rejoice in manyfold and growing profit.

  36. Indeed, there was a blessing in the Tigris's channels,

    and the favor of rising fortune for the caliph—

  37. a gift from Him who gave the caliph his dominion,

    and shields him from the sighs of envious souls.

  38. Rivers have flowed for you with blessing and good fortune,

    to a garden amid broad plains of hard earth.

  39. They make grapes and blessed palms grow,

    and mounds of wheat on the harvest's threshing floors.

  40. Whenever we send a scout in search of bounty,

    he returns to us, praise be to God, the most praiseworthy scout.

  41. Would you favor a captive who is not grateful,

    and free him from the irons' prolonged biting?

  42. He will relapse, for wickedness was his nature,

    even if he says, "I will make amends and never return."

  43. You regretted it, but regret avails nothing once

    you have been flung headlong by the blows of hunting falcons.

  44. And how can al-Farazdaq escape after

    he yelped while in the jaws of a thick-necked, raging lion?

  45. Have you not seen Khalid's two hands bestow

    on the people a bounty among his many bounties?

  46. O sons of Malik, al-Farazdaq has never ceased

    earning the shame of everlasting disgraces.

  47. So do not accept al-Farazdaq's coinage, for he

    is counterfeit; every assayer rejects his minting.

  48. And when we came to you as delegates, we found

    spearheads and cavalry to be the most successful envoys.

  49. Have you not seen that Yarbu', when I recall them

    and their battle-days, strengthen the fabric of the poems?

  50. Whom have you, if you count them, to match my horsemen,

    who captured Hakam and al-Hadrami ibn Khalid?

  51. He made the blessed river flow for him; it surged

    with foaming, massing waves like hills.

  52. So grant Khalid as much again as his right hand holds;

    you will find him Islam's noblest defender.

  53. It is as if—though I fear no injustice from Khalid—

    in my fear I am given black serpents' venom to drink.

  54. And I truly hope Khalid will release me

    and remove from me the locked irons.

  55. The darkness parted to reveal the light of his face,

    the radiance of a blazing star whose light never fades.

  56. Will you not remember kinship, or lend me

    a virtue of yours, from a noble and generous character?

  57. You have the like of Khalid's two hands when he buys

    every kind of praise with all his newly gained and inherited wealth.

  58. If my fetters have checked my ambition, often

    I have reached the farthest ends of distant ambitions,

  59. among the praise-bearing ones, when they bared

    their trailing hems and became forbidding to the supplicant.

  60. Would Ibn Abd Allah favor one grateful to him,

    praising your kindness in releasing both his fetters?

  61. There is no affliction but, every evening

    and every morning, it grows, never receding.

  62. The smith says to me, "Are you standing?"

    Yet I am only like another man sitting.

  63. As though I were a Haruri, over whose ankle loomed

    thirty smiths from Sarim and Ka'id.

  64. It was not on religious grounds that they piled irons on his leg,

    and they knew that my faith was not exhausted.

  65. And he recites against me verses I never uttered,

    like one confronting the wind among the hunted beasts.

Sol 6.1