’a-fāṭima qabla bayniki matti‘īnī |
wa-man‘uki mā sa’altu ka-’an tabīnī |
fa-lā ta‘idī mawā‘ida kādhibātin |
tamurru bihā riyāḥu ṣ-ṣayfi dūnī25 |
Meter (al-wāfir): SLSSL SLSSL SLL (SS may be replaced by L); rhyme: -ī/ūnī. Note the internal rhyme in line 1 (also in ll. 4 and 36).
The pre-Islamic poet ‘Ā’idh ibn Miḥṣan ibn Tha‘labah, nicknamed al-Muthaqqib (or al-Muthaqqab), of the ‘Abd al-Qays tribe, came from al-Baḥrayn (larger than the modern state and covering the eastern part of the Peninsula) and visited al-Ḥīrah in the time of the Lakhmid kings ‘Amr ibn Hind and al-Nu‘mān Abū Qābūs. His nickname (“the piercer”) derives from line 11 of the following poem. It opens with a nasīb (1–18), first on the poet’s beloved, and then describing her companions when they part; this is followed by a relatively long camel description (waṣf al-nāqah, 19–39). The poem concludes with five lines (40–45) addressed to a certain ‘Amr, possibly the king of al-Ḥīrah. The concluding part of a qaṣīdah is often mistakenly called its gharaḍ or “purpose”; in fact, each of its constituent sections is a gharaḍ in its own right, at least for the pre-modern Arab critics. By dint of the final section this poem might be called a eulogy or panegyric (madīḥ), but the bulk of the poem is not about the patron but about the poet himself. Fakhr, as this vaunting, boasting, or self-glorification is called, dominates here, as it often does.
O Fāṭimah, before you go, give me some pleasure! You
deny me what I ask as if you have already gone!
And do not make false promises
that summer winds will sweep out of my reach.26
If my left hand were as contrary as you are to me,
I would not let it join my right,
But I would cut it off and say, “Begone!”
Thus I dislike those who dislike me too.
5
Who are these women, going up in litters from Ḍubayb,27
so slowly they’ve not left the wadi yet?
They passed along Sharāf and then Dhāt Rijl,
while keeping al-Dharāniḥ on their right.
And thus they were when crossing Falj;
their litters looked like cargo loaded on ships’ decks:
Resembling ships, though Bactrian camels instead,28
broad in the back and in the sutures of their skulls.
The women sit, nested in shaking howdahs, unconcerned,
those killers of brave men made meek.
They’re like gazelles that lingered at a lote tree bush,
10
and nibble at the nearest twigs.
They’re visible through the thin drapes and have let down a cloth29
in which they pierced30 some peepholes for their eyes.
For all their cruelty they are much sought,
those ladies long of tresses and of locks.
Some of their charms they show, others they hide
—their necks, their well-protected skins;
Gold glittering on their chests,
colored like ivory, no wrinkles there.
when on a day they leave a man behind, and carry off
15
a pledge he values most, it will not come again.31
Thus, jesting about her, I’m feathering my arrow shafts;32
she who excels all of the herd’s gazelles that stand and gaze.
A hillock they ascended, and into a hollow they went down,
they hardly halted for the midday rest.
I said to one of them, my saddle fastened for
a fiery noontide against which I set my face,
“Though you may cut the bond between us, I
remain the master of myself!”
Therefore, dispel your33 sorrow with a camel strong
20
and sturdy, like the hammer of a blacksmith, hard,
True in her steady, rapid pace, as if a cat
were racing with her, clawing at her girth;34
Topped with a towering hump with matted hair,
fed with crushed date-stones, fodder from the fertile land.
Her strap upon her breast I fasten when it slackens,
loosened by the slackness of her girth.35
Five marks are left upon the earth when she lies down, small as the spots
that black-backed sandgrouse leave, drinking at dawn.36
She fills her chest, takes a deep breath, and snaps
25
the strands of plaited untanned leather thongs.
She strikes, when coursing fast, the two great veins between her thighs
with cast-up pebbles, that resound with a dull thud.
Her forelegs throw up stones like those a hired camelherd
would pelt at a strange camel, driving it away.
She blocks with ever-moving bushy tail a womb’s
mouth that has never given birth; nor has she milk.
Your hear the flies that buzz and hum,
singing like doves above their nests.
I cast the reins to her, dismounting, and she slept
30
as she was wont, when dawn appeared.
Her resting place upon the stony, rugged ground
was like the place one throws one’s bridle down.37
Her saddle and her leather thongs seem fixed
upon a long-keeled, well-greased ship that sails the sea,
Its prow cleaving the water, climbing
towering billows, on their highest crests.
She has become long-necked and her sciatic vein sticks out between
the muscles of her thighs, thick at the back-vein and aorta.38
when I get up at night to saddle her
35
she moans the moaning of a melancholy man,
And says, when I unfurl her girth strap:39
“Is this to be his custom then, and mine, forever?
Always untying, saddling; staying, traveling on?
will he not spare me and save me then?”
My jesting and her earnestness have left of her
a body like a clay-daubed doorman’s hut.40
I wound her reins around my hand, I placed
the saddle and a cushion propping my right hand,
Then I went off with her at night, along a track
40
that stretched out over ridges and flat plains,
To ‘Amr—and it was from ‘Amr she had come to me—
the man of sober wisdom and of valiant deeds.41
So either be my brother then in truth,
that I may know from you my lean and fat,
Or cast me off and take me as an enemy—
I will beware of you and you beware of me!
I do not know, when I set out to do things for the best,
which of the two will be my share:
Either the good I seek,
45
or else the evil that seeks me.