Sol 5.6

  1. Tomorrow, when the tribe gathers, we shall satisfy a longing;

    yet I swear our longing will not be satisfied tomorrow,

  2. when separation rends the whole company and seeks

    to scatter a people whom distance has reduced to far-flung fragments.

  3. The winding valleys will be emptied of all who dwell there,

    left desolate, where the doves may sing as they please.

  4. The tireless, track-marking camels have ranged over them, after crossing

    the fine gravel of every easy plain and every tract of hard ground.

  5. Enough for me, in loving Māwiya, is passion itself;

    no led spare mount I ever met was easier to guide.

  6. I envy every visitor to those sheltered beauties,

    though once among them I was the jealous guardian—the envied one.

  7. For the nocturnal assaults of grave affairs, whenever they set forth, I ready

    a lean, swaying, solitary she-camel of Jamālī stock.

  8. Her girth curves around her swelling ribs

    like the curve of the lofty masonry raised by Persian lords.

  9. She has broken with the former covenant of calfhood, wrenching herself free;

    the saddle-ropes compressed her until she grew firm anew.

  10. She struts as a champion stallion struts when facing danger,

    her back and inner flanks thickly clothed in flesh.

  11. At dawn on the fifth day without water, she is still swift and vigorous;

    at evening she sets out, making light of the two vast, rugged plains.

  12. I say to him, “O ʿAbd Qays, out of sheer yearning,

    where do you think the fire-kindler has lit his fire?”

  13. He says, “I see a fire with its fuel blazing

    where the ravine spreads wide with wormwood and boxthorn.”

  14. I love the soil of Najd, though in the Ghawr I have a need;

    passion has descended to the Ghawr and climbed to Najd, O ʿAbd Qays.

  15. Indeed, I belong to a people whose warhorses are always

    at the frontier, where you meet them as squadrons led in order.

  16. They heap high the fires of war with an army like a cloud-bank,

    above which rise the stars of white swords until it blazes.

  17. Whenever we marched against a tribe in its own land,

    we left them slain, and many another driven away in flight,

  18. and others bound fast in rawhide, with none able to wrench free

    a foot or hand from the rawhide’s cruel grip.

  19. Indeed, I have horsemen who wrest a chieftain away

    whenever every dust-cloud raised by cowards turns and flees.

  20. At Khabrāʾ al-ʿUnnāb we drove your women back,

    and they said, “Freedom today—or enslavement tomorrow!”

  21. At dawn they urged the camel-litters onward with the cry “Asʿidā!”

    though only yesterday they had not urged them on with “Asʿidā!”

  22. You found no fault with a fire whose fuel cast light upon

    Firās and Bisṭām son of Qays, bound in chains.

  23. At al-Saydān you kindled a feeble fire,

    and made a spectacle of Jaʿthan’s disgrace.

  24. The fire’s fuel blazed, yielding clear insight

    and a lesson even to a blind man whose resolve had wavered.

  25. It was as though the woman they call Jaʿthan had mounted

    a huge, smooth-coated Bactrian camel from Kerman.

  26. The two branches, Saʿd and Mālik, bequeathed me

    splendor and might, made everlasting through life.

  27. Whenever I am summoned between the two sons of Mughādhah, you will find me

    in pride’s very stronghold, head held high and haughty.

  28. Whenever I wish, I encamp in Iyād and its rugged country,

    or, if I wish, in the sandy reaches of al-ʿAqīq—then Jalʿad.

  29. Had my counsel concerning ʿAdī ibn Jundab prevailed,

    they would have seen how bitterly we oppressed Sumayra’s two sons.

  30. Does Gap-tooth testify against us, though he saw

    what a spectacle Sumayra became at our hands amid his ranks?

  31. Whenever I meet Gap-tooth, despite the ugliness of his gap,

    I set a file upon whatever teeth it has left.

  32. We kept you safe until you had built your houses,

    and made your shepherd leave the water at Falaḥ, then brought him back to water,

  33. with disheveled warriors on shaggy mounts, bold raiders at high noon,

    whenever the summoner calls again and again in alarm and raises the war-cry;

  34. battalions arriving troop after troop by every upland way,

    accustomed to the blows of white swords in all they practice.

  35. When a crushing stroke from my two hands is warded off him,

    he bares the scarred forearms of a towering champion,

  36. astride a swift, broad-chested horse that resembles him in daylight;

    when its gallop is renewed, he becomes a huge, towering wolf.

  37. I see the omen-birds beside al-Hajjaj flying rightward—auspiciously—

    for you, O Commander of the Faithful, and more propitiously still.

  38. You restored to God’s House the covenant of His Prophet,

    and repaired what the two Khubaybs had corrupted.

  39. No den-lion coming to drink at Khuffān, roaring,

    advancing upon an equal despite the restrainers’ rebukes,

  40. is bolder than al-Hajjaj in war as he charges ahead,

    when some among the host fear the plunge and shrink away.

  41. The champions of Iraq confronted him face-to-face,

    and in broad daylight the illustrious Persian lords lay prostrate before him.

  42. For al-Qullayn and the Swine I have an extemporaneous retort;

    and if they answer me, I shall be still more praiseworthy in answering back.

Sol 5.6