ألا تلك عرسي أم سكن تنكرت — أبو الأسود الدؤلي

Lo, my wife there, Umm Sakan, has changed

her ways toward me—and misfortunes keep turning.

She makes hints at times, and I suppose that she

is carefully tending some matter through which she seeks favor.

So I said to her, “Do not be hasty: every distress

will pass; even if it lasts a little, it will go.”

If, then, you see me sitting, not leaving you,

at the door, neither raiding nor going away,

then you do not know how many a vast waste,

with fine pebbles, sands, and level open ground,

I kept a true course through, when a man was oppressed

by falling dew and dripping, smoke-dark mist,

until morning's dawn and its star appeared,

and night's blackness lifted from what it concealed.

And a hard, barren desert, where sandgrouse lose their way

and the gaze recoils or is cut short,

I crossed when the mirage seemed

a cloud standing upright on its hindquarters,

riding a sturdy she-camel that makes a swift trot her walking pace,

like the watchful wild ass of the rock darting down.

You see her, when the men ask their fellows for a mount,

with baggage for the rear rider upon her, and a place to ride.

And after a night's travel, in the morning she seems as though

when the farthest in the caravan is struck, she herself were struck.

As though she had a calf she saw before her,

as far as the eye reaches, toward which she is drawn and goes.

And a feared passage between a rocky crag and a thicket,

tangled and narrow, with no way around it,

as though the lions' lairs in its depths

were wallowing grounds, and men's footprints a playground,

I traversed when the mouth of its path was shrouded

by dense, pitch-dark, impenetrable night,

with a muscular companion, or a white, keen-edged sword,

which the pierced-eared Indian had steeped in poison.

I passed through it with a fearless night-roamer walking at my side,

like a wolf of the open waste, his cloak torn through.

Noble and forbearing, whose harm is not feared,

nor his rashness, in earnest or in play.

Whenever I said, “I have angered him,” his affection returned,

as al-Rayya's ever-returning love returned.

And when his opponent met the men, he would be—

as al-Rayya's ever-returning love returned.