Sol 6.1

  1. Separation has borne your neighbor far away; endure it.

    She has gone far from you, after affection and coy endearments.

  2. Though you have done so, old age has indeed overtaken me,

    and I have prolonged my estrangement from you; forsake me, or renew our bond.

  3. And many a smooth-cheeked woman, with a languid gaze,

    fair and delightful to the beholder's eye,

  4. a tender maiden among those who walk with swaying grace,

    with the gait of wild cows on a loose-sanded dune,

  5. I met in the ardor of youth; yet

    my heart was no target for her, nor was I consumed by passion.

  6. I am a man whose nature is chastity, and I have never been

    soiled in my garments, nor suspect in my conduct.

  7. Will you not put her out of mind and cease remembering her,

    when she has burdened you, I think, with what you have never borne,

  8. astride a sturdy camel that tosses its braided rein, as though it were

    a wild jackass that summered among lean, wasted jennies?

  9. Gaunt and withered, they ward off his breast

    and his forehead with hooves hard as stone.

  10. Frisky, he bites their haunches, as though he were

    an arrow shaft the competing archer keeps shooting far.

  11. Between al-Sumayyah and al-Sanan, they are sheltered

    from him along every edge of a green meadow,

  12. until, when the noonday heats struck the soil

    and the plants, after moisture and luxuriant growth,

  13. and they had donned one color after another, and there had fallen

    from them the flaky scurf of shedding sheep's wool,

  14. and they had drunk every remnant they found

    on the ground of the rain of al-Simak al-A'zal,

  15. they and he left the wilderness; by morning they were

    where the gullies meet, above al-Duldal.

  16. They spent the day in a branch of Wadi al-Dhibab,

    or at al-Ukhayrim, close to the watering place.

  17. They approached it, their chests thrust forward,

    and their eyes wakeful, never, never heedless.

  18. Until, when darkness thickened, they came down to it;

    and indeed they cried out in fear, ready to bolt.

  19. They came upon a tall horse, straining at its rein,

    and the lad's hand poised for a thrust into the wild jack.

  20. Lean of limb, nothing in his forelegs failed him—

    neither an enlarged splint-bone nor a swollen leg-vein.

  21. By the groove of his thigh-sinew you see a deep hollow,

    its muscle moving freely just above the joint.

  22. His hock is compact, and his croup is graced

    by a neck firmly joined to his back.

  23. Our lad launched him after their hindquarters,

    once he had him running straight, without holding back.

  24. Skittish and swerving, they raced, while close behind came

    Yahudi with his rider, in a falcon's swoop.

  25. He pounced on them when the hooves reached level ground,

    and when they climbed rough ground, he did not falter.

  26. Fine, fresh meat: they took their fill of its flavor

    and its roasting scent, with no food eaten before it.

  27. He built us shade, and there stood gazing toward us

    a flame, fed by a wood-gatherer in haste.

  28. At times winter quenched it; at others

    the dry brushwood of an old fire-kindler raised its glow.

  29. Will you turn back, then, and see what

    time's vicissitudes have left of the dwelling's traces?

  30. A dwelling at one of the two al-Rijlahs, as though it

    had been effaced for years and never yet inhabited.

  31. As though the scouring, rain-bearing winds had clothed it

    in dust from wastelands and heights, sifted through a sieve.

  32. The winds played over its open ground, until it became

    barely discernible at the limit of a watcher's gaze.

  33. Thus time overwhelms every dwelling,

    until it seems never to have been inhabited.

  34. There is no day that a tomorrow will not inherit,

    and the year hands it on to another year approaching.

  35. May you be watered, dwelling, though you cannot hear

    our voices, with the freely pouring rain of spring.

  36. Your people once were your adornment;

    they were exchanged for others, but you were not exchanged.

  37. So weep when dwellings weep for their people,

    justified in mourning; you would wrong them if you did not.

  38. Noble people! Who could inhabit you like them

    in this age, or in the age yet to come?

  39. They left the trenches by which they had diverted

    away from their bedding the gravel washed down the gullies,

  40. and ashes of a fire now ready to crumble away,

    its dark spot like the surface of a mustard seed,

  41. after the grazing herds and the tents once there.

    No petitioner found the giver of abundance inaccessible.

  42. He shunned foul deeds from his earliest youth,

    and rose to the loftiest, finest ancestral honor,

  43. from that rank among the Arabs above which

    no one has higher honor, nor any further station.

  44. Many a delighted nobleman has gone forth

    from his presence, joyful at a lavish giver's outpouring.

  45. And many a stranger, abandoned by his people to his plight—

    whenever you see him, like an outcast left untended—

  46. no one turned toward him, and he found

    nothing but your bounty; you were the best refuge.

  47. Like the full moon, to which clouds bequeath their shadows

    at one time, while at another it shines and emerges clear.

  48. Men extol themselves in private,

    but when you see them together, you do not reckon them equals.

  49. And when you see an assembly in which he stands,

    you make his preeminence plain, though no one asks.

  50. I find his father, his grandfather, and their forefather,

    Marwan, in lofty, towering honor.

  51. [Unclear epithet]—they were a safeguard for mankind,

    and their latest could equal the deeds of their first.

  52. You are their son; upon you their houses have been built,

    in a lofty conqueror of those who harbor rancor.

  53. A radiant lord: you see the mighty before him

    humbled, their greatest like the asbal [unclear term].

  54. He stands for justice; his hearing never falls short

    of a wronged man's voice, nor that of one brought low.

  55. So I repaid you twofold with the best I knew;

    and savor the sweetness of life, without being wearied.

Sol 6.1