Sol 6.1

  1. Greet al-Hidamla, of Dhat al-Mawa'is;

    and al-Hinw has become a desolate, unpeopled waste.

  2. Greet the dwellings I likened to tattered cloth,

    or a worn Yemeni garment, threadbare from use.

  3. Between al-Mukhaysir and al-'Azzaf lies a dwelling,

    like writing from Moses' time upon the sheets.

  4. No union, since Hind turned away; yet had she stopped,

    she would have bewitched me, and the monk in two sackcloth robes in his cell.

  5. Had she not wished for union with us, she would have given a choice gift,

    a cherished thing that mingles with the heart's core.

  6. You were once our beloved, Hind; so reflect:

    what troubles you about my gray hair and my bowed back?

  7. When memories came at al-Dayrayn, I was kept awake

    by the cry of fowl and the striking of bells.

  8. So I said to the riders, as our departure grew urgent,

    "How far is Yabrin from Bab al-Faradis?"

  9. Perhaps the beloved, far away, may be brought nearer

    by following the stars and the riders' passage on pale camels.

  10. If only we had crossed a Samawa tract, whose watering places

    lie toward Dumat Khabt, I would make few night halts.

  11. Can a call from the mountains of snow be heard

    by the people of al-Iyad and a clan at al-Nabaris?

  12. When the deluded poet wages war on me, I am

    under the protection of a grave buried at Marran.

  13. He was fierce and unyielding, and bequeathed to us

    strife against men, through his fierce sons.

  14. We defend and seize the tyrant, leading him along

    in a tightly twisted, five-stranded rope of rawhide thongs.

  15. The hangers-on are shamed when the true-born man tells them,

    "Count the pebbles, then measure with the gauges."

  16. A truffle on a flat plain can offer no resistance,

    between the two roads in the smooth desert wastes.

  17. And a two-year-old camel, when bound in a shared tether,

    could not match the charge of the huge, full-grown camels.

  18. We, when a people's young camels hiss,

    charge with a proud, towering champion, never overthrown.

  19. Have these peoples any sense that might warn them

    what men have experienced of my biting and crushing with teeth?

  20. I was made—there is no hope of overpowering me—

    a fetter for a stubborn, mighty devil.

  21. I heat branding irons that cure every babbling fool,

    suckled on the milk of jinn, his wits deranged.

  22. Who would follow one who is no leader? For we have

    in Nizar's two sons a share that is not diminished.

  23. And Nizar's two sons have placed me in a station

    at the summit of a rugged mountain with ancient, massive peaks.

  24. I am a man of Nizar, rooted in their stock;

    my thickets and my lion's lair among them are dense and strong.

  25. Do not boast over a people you know to possess

    the light of guidance and the thicketed lair of glory.

  26. A people for whom Abraham reserved his prayer,

    when he raised the House, wall upon foundation.

  27. We are those who struck men without distinction,

    until they were set straight, though they were followers of Iblis.

  28. Desist: Nizar will never be rivaled in nobility

    by a base branch and a root that was never planted.

  29. My grappling in every battlefield has already been tested

    by thick-necked lions; what then of the puny cucumbers?

  30. Tribes meet earthquakes when I advance against them

    with the catapult and pounding blows of hammers.

  31. When I bound the wayward among men in one tether,

    I left them either exhausted or torn to pieces.

  32. They were like one falling to his death from a mountain's twin heights,

    and one drowned, engulfed in the sea's surging flood.

  33. My horses, which reached Najran and then returned

    on the day of al-Kilab, coming to water unhindered,

  34. have filled Najran's two valleys, marked for battle,

    with mail-clad men and massed squadrons of horses.

  35. We sometimes don the tyrant's raiment, leading him captive,

    and strike the helmets above the crowns of heads.

  36. We are those who routed the army of Dhu Najab,

    and seized the two Mundhirs on the day of Qabus.

  37. Taym claims you; and Taym, in the villages of Saba,

    has had buffalo hide bite into their necks.

  38. And Taym is the basest of all who walk, and the basest among them

    are Dhuhl's offspring, sons of the filthy black ones.

  39. You are ascribed to the worst father, O two elbows of a dung beetle,

    which in summer enters a house left unswept.

Sol 6.1