The Muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays

1. Stop, you two, and let us weep at the memory of a beloved and a dwellingat the edge of the twisting sands between Dakhul and Hawmal.

2. Then Tudih, then Miqrat—whose traces have not been erasedby what the south wind and the north wind wove across them.

3. You see gazelle droppings in its courtyardsand level hollows, like grains of pepper.

4. On the morning of departure, the day they loaded up,by the clan’s thorn trees, I seemed to be splitting bitter apples.

5. My companions halted their mounts there beside me,saying: Do not destroy yourself with grief. Endure with grace.

6. Yet my only cure is a flood of tears—but at an effaced trace, is there any place for weeping?

7. As was your way with Umm al-Huwayrith before her,and her neighbor Umm al-Rabab at Masal.

8. When they rose, musk breathed from them,like the east wind arriving fragrant with cloves.

9. My eyes streamed tears from longingdown my chest, until they soaked my sword belt.

10. Ah, many a fine day you had with them—above all, the day at Darat Juljul.

11. And the day I slaughtered my mount for the virgins—what wonder at all the baggage carried from its saddle!

12. All day the virgins tossed its meat to one another,and fat like the twisted fringe of white silk.

13. And the day I entered the curtained litter, Unayza’s litter,and she said: Damn you! You will make me go on foot.

14. She said, as the howdah tilted with us together:You have lamed my camel, Imru al-Qays. Get down.

15. I told her: Keep going, loosen the reins,and do not keep me from your fruit, tasted again and again.

16. Many a woman like you, pregnant or nursing, I have visited by nightand distracted from her yearling child hung with amulets.

17. Whenever he cried behind her, she turned one half toward him,while the half beneath me never shifted.

18. And one day atop the dune she denied herself to meand swore an oath she would not break.

19. Fatima, gently—enough of this coyness.If you have resolved to leave me, leave me graciously.

20. If some trait of mine has displeased you,draw my clothes from yours, and they will slip free.

21. Has it deceived you that your love is killing me,and that whatever you command, my heart obeys?

22. Your eyes shed tears only so you could strikewith both their arrows into the broken pieces of a slaughtered heart.

23. And many a sheltered pearl, whose tent none dared approach,I enjoyed at leisure, never hurried.

24. I passed guards to reach her, and clansmenwatching for me, who would gladly have concealed my murder.

25. When the Pleiades appeared across the skylike the jeweled folds of an ornate sash.

26. I came when she had taken off her clothes for sleepbeside the curtain, wearing only a loose sleeping gown.

27. She said: By God, you have no way out,and I do not see your recklessness ever leaving you.

28. I led her out, and as she walked she dragged behind us,over our tracks, the train of her patterned robe.

29. Once we had crossed the clan’s open groundand the bed of a hollow among ridged, tangled dunes enclosed us,

30. I drew her toward me by the locks at her temples, and she leanedover me, slender-waisted, her anklets ringing with fragrance.

31. Whenever she turned toward me, her scent breathed out,like the east wind arriving fragrant with cloves.

32. Slender, pale, not loose-bodied,her breastbones polished like a mirror.

33. Like a virgin pearl in its shell, white touched with yellow,nourished by pure water no hand has troubled.

34. She turns away, then shows a smooth cheek, and guards herselfwith the gaze of a wild doe of Wajra nursing her young.

35. A neck like the gazelle’s—not excessivewhen she raises it, and not unadorned.

36. Hair that adorns her back, black and coal-dark,thick as a date-palm cluster heavy with fruit.

37. Her braids rise high,while knots disappear among strands twined and loose.

38. A delicate waist, slender as a braided rein,and a shin like the smooth stem of a well-watered palm.

39. By morning, crumbs of musk lie over her bed;she sleeps through forenoon, never belting herself to labor.

40. She reaches with soft fingers, not coarse,like gazelle grubs, or tooth-sticks cut from a smooth-branched tree.

41. At evening she lights the darkness as though she werethe lamp in the night-cell of a monk withdrawn from the world.

42. Even a man of judgment gazes longingly at one like herwhen she stands full-grown between shift and gown.

43. Other men’s youthful follies have passed away,but my heart will not withdraw from loving you.

44. Ah, many a stubborn adversary over you I turned away—a counselor tireless in his reproach.

45. And a night like the sea’s waves lowered its curtainsover me with every kind of care, to test me.

46. I said to it, when it stretched its spine,heaped its hindquarters, and pressed down with its chest:

47. Long night, clear away nowinto morning—though morning will be no better than you.

48. What a night—as if its starswere bound by every tightly twisted rope to Yadhbul.

49. As if the Pleiades were hung in their stationsby flaxen cables to unyielding boulders.

50. Often I set out at dawn, while the birds are still in their nests,on a sleek, massive horse that shackles the wild game.

51. Charging, fleeing, advancing, retreating at once,like a boulder hurled down from above by a torrent.

52. Bay-colored—the saddle pad slips from the middle of his backas rainwater slips from smooth stone.

53. He pours out speed when other swift horses, worn down,raise dust across the trampled, hardened ground.

54. Lean-flanked, surging—as though his deep-chested snorting,when his heat boils within him, were a cauldron’s boil.

55. He throws the light young rider from his backand whips away the clothes of the heavy-handed, burdened man.

56. Racing like a child’s spinning top,set whirling by the turn of his hands on a doubled cord.

57. He has a gazelle’s flanks, an ostrich’s legs,a wolf’s long stride, and a young fox’s quickened pace.

58. When he bends into his course, the breadth across his shouldersis like a bride’s grinding slab, or the stone for crushing bitter apples.

59. His saddle and bridle remained on him through the night,and he stayed standing before my eyes, never set loose.

60. Then a herd appeared to us, its ewes likevirgins circling Dawar in long-tailed robes.

61. They wheeled away like a necklace of banded onyxspaced with pearls on the neck of a nobly connected clansman.

62. He brought us up with the leading animals, while behind themthe heavy ones stayed together in a herd not yet scattered.

63. He ran between bull and ewe,taking each in turn, without breaking sweat enough to be washed.

64. All day the meat cooks worked—some layingstrips to roast, others hurrying a pot to boil.

65. We rode home, and the stallion went tossing his head;whenever the eye climbed his height, it slid back down.

66. The blood of the leading animals upon his throatlooked like henna juice on combed white hair.

67. Viewed from behind, his tail filled the space between his legs,thick and flowing just above the ground, not scant.

68. Harith, do you see the lightning? Let me show you its flash,like hands flickering within a mass of crowned cloud.

69. Its brilliance flares—or the lamps of a monkwho has filled them with oil around twisted wicks.

70. My companions and I sat watching it between Hamirand Ikam, though the farthest point I watched lay beyond them.

71. By morning it poured water from every cloud,toppling the great trees of Kanhabal onto their chins.

72. At Tayma it left no date-palm trunkand no fortress standing, except those raised on stone.

73. At dawn, the summit of Mount Mujaymir,amid the torrent and its debris, looked like a spindle whorl.

74. Aban, amid the streams of its rain,looked like a tribal elder wrapped in a striped cloak.

75. Over the plain of Ghabit it cast down its load,like a Yemeni merchant arriving with his burdened chests.

76. By morning, the drowned beasts of prey within it,along its farthest reaches, looked like uprooted wild onions.

77. Over Qatan at Shaym fell the right side of its rain,and its left over Sitar, then Yadhbul.

78. With night it lowered its chest upon Baysanand drove the mountain goats down from every refuge.