1. Do you recognize, in the desert east of Shabik,

    dwellings abandoned by their people, and a place of play?

  2. I kept showing them to my two companions, though once I saw

    their people there, fresh-faced youths and grey-haired men,

  3. and women screened by curtains, as though

    the clan's tents hid, in those women, a herd of gazelles.

  4. Secluded women, save that an onlooker might glimpse

    a smooth forehead or henna-stained fingers.

  5. So we left one evening, scarcely able to leave,

    and were told, 'Look, no one lives in the camp—go, you two.'

  6. As though we and our two saddles rode an Akhdari she-ass,

    unfoaled, racing a lean-flanked, white-rumped male.

  7. The two stayed on rain-renewed lands, grazing them,

    from 'the guest' [perhaps 'summer'], until they molted and shed their coats.

  8. They nibbled lush growth which, when aided

    by the night's dew, gushed water, well-watered and grassy,

  9. in an uninhabited first-rain pasture whose meadows seemed

    clothed in gilded brocade of blossoms.

  10. They remained there until the moisture sank away,

    and you saw only water receding underground and trickling thinly,

  11. and the summer heat shriveled every remnant

    of vegetation except saykaran and hullab.

  12. He kept driving her through al-Ajid's rugged ground,

    while both were clad in a blazing summer day.

  13. Whenever she chose a direction he did not want,

    he harried her until she yielded and grew weary,

  14. like the husband of a headstrong wife [reading uncertain]: she resists him, and the

    quarrel deepens his estrangement from her and his anger.

  15. Skittish, whenever he visits her she keeps in reserve for him

    the hooves of her hind legs; he turns away and trots.

  16. He did not notice until she turned away while he grazed;

    when he saw her, she strove against him, and he sped along.

  17. Full-grown, she stretches straight ahead when she runs,

    and mixes a canter into her pace when he canters.

  18. When she crosses a vast wilderness, she opens before him

    a further, far-reaching stretch of land beyond it.

  19. He led her, when the night had cleared, to water-hollows,

    wide open, a drinking place for the dark-ringed ones.

  20. You see the night's lamp reflected there like a beacon,

    shimmering brightly as it appears in the west.

  21. They encountered a broad-knuckled man who had gone without food

    through hunger until he was gaunt [reading uncertain] and bow-legged.

  22. He hunts for children of his, who have rarely passed a morning,

    since they came together, except as hungry paupers.

  23. He gave her time until she had drunk a little,

    and she drew near us; nearby, he crouched and nocked an arrow.

  24. He propped himself on one knee, but not

    on the other, bending down to one side.

  25. He leaned over a thick-bellied bow with ridged grain,

    cut from nab' wood, driving its arrow to exhaustion.

  26. When the tightly braided bowstring moans, you would think

    the hidden parts of its wood were answering it.

  27. When he shot, it availed him nothing; you could never see

    a dodge like the ass's from his arrow when he loosed it.

  28. He sent his gaze after her, his two eyes kohled

    by her hooves with tawny dust stirred from the plain.

  29. Has a step of longing plunged into the heart,

    to reopen a lovesick heart's wound and set it quivering,

  30. for one of the fair, bashful women, whose complexion seems

    gilded when her gauze tunic flies off?

  31. You see her jewelry against a freeborn woman's contours,

    and it has put forth leaves, pleasing to the eyes and soul.

  32. She says—and airing reproach is blame—

    'Have you resolved to desert us and keep away?'

  33. I told her: no; rather, a man has won me over,

    whose firesticks spark readily, who counts praise as booty.

  34. He knows wealth will not remain with one who withholds it,

    and wealth is only regained so that it may go again.

  35. His father is the Commander of the Faithful, and his mother,

    through Hajar ibn Amr, is of Kinda's noblest lineage.

  36. Abu al-Asi and Amr gave him lineage; the two came together—

    how noble this one as a maternal uncle, and that one as a father!

  37. Two noble men from distinct tribal branches, both laying claim

    to a noble branch for their stock; nobly they begot.

  38. I adorn verse whose like will never be adorned

    for him by another poet, however inventive.

  39. Rhymes which, were they fine cloth, would not be sold,

    and would clothe only a proven man of perfect worth:

  40. the praise of a man who repays kindness when he receives it,

    and does not grieve over what has passed him by.

Sol 6.1