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 twisted sands between al-Dakhul and Hawmal.

2. Then Tudiha and al-Miqrat, whose traces have not been erasedbecause the south and north winds wove over them.

3. You see gazelle droppings in their courtyardsand open flats, like peppercorns.

4. On the morning of parting, the day they loaded up,there by the tribe’s thorn trees, I seemed to be crushing bitter gourds.

5. My companions halted their mounts there beside me,saying, “Do not destroy yourself with grief. Bear it with dignity.”

6. Yet my cure is a flood of tears.But is there any recourse in weeping over an effaced trace?

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

8. Whenever the two women rose, musk spread from them,like the east wind bringing the fragrance of cloves.

9. My eyes overflowed with tears of longingdown my chest, until my tears soaked my sword belt.

10. Ah, many a fine day you had with those women,especially the day at Darat Juljul.

11. And the day I slaughtered my mount for the young women—how astonishing that its saddle and gear were carried away!

12. All day the young women tossed pieces of 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 walk.”

14. She said, as the litter tilted with us together,“You have crippled my camel, Imru al-Qays. Get down!”

15. I told her, “Keep going and loosen its 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 year-old child wearing amulets.

17. When the child cried behind her, she turned half her body toward him,while the half beneath me never shifted.

18. And one day on top of the dune she resisted meand swore an oath she would not break.

19. Fatima, gently—enough of this coyness.If you have resolved to cut me off, then do it gracefully.

20. And if some trait of mine has displeased you,draw my clothes away from yours, and they will come 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 that you could strikewith both your arrows into the ten parts of a slaughtered heart.

23. And many a sheltered maiden, an egg of the curtained chamber whose tent no one dared approach,I enjoyed at leisure, without being hurried.

24. I passed guards to reach her, and a whole claneager to watch me, if only they could conceal my killing.

25. It was when the Pleiades appeared sideways in the sky,like the folds of a jeweled sash.

26. I came when she had taken off her clothes to sleepbeside the curtain, wearing only the lightest shift.

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 she walked behind us, draggingover our tracks the train of an embroidered cloak.

29. When we had crossed the tribe’s open ground and reachedthe hollow of a low tract with rugged, curving dunes,

30. I drew her to me by the locks at both sides of her head, and she leanedover me, slender-waisted and fragrant, her anklets full.

31. Whenever she turned toward me, her scent spread,like the east wind bringing the fragrance of cloves.

32. Slender and white, not loose or heavy,the skin above her breasts polished like a mirror.

33. Like an untouched egg, white tinged with yellow,nourished by pure water no one had disturbed.

34. She turns away, yet reveals a smooth cheek, and guards herselfwith the gaze of a wild doe of Wajra protecting her fawn.

35. And a neck like a white gazelle’s—not excessivewhen she raises it, and not left bare of ornaments.

36. And hair that adorns her back, intensely black,thick as a date-palm cluster heavy with fruit.

37. Its braids rise high,while the hairpins are lost among doubled tresses and loose strands.

38. And a delicate waist, slim as a braided rein,and a calf like the smooth stem of a tended, watered plant.

39. Crumbs of musk remain on her bed into the morning.She sleeps late and never belts up her clothes to work.

40. She reaches with soft fingers, not coarse, as though they werethe pale worms of Zaby or tooth-cleaning twigs from a smooth-branched shrub.

41. At evening she lights the darkness as though she werethe lamp in the night retreat of a solitary monk.

42. Even a self-controlled man gazes yearningly at one like herwhen she stands fully grown between her shift and outer smock.

43. Other men’s youthful follies have faded with age,but my heart has not withdrawn from loving you.

44. Ah, many a stubborn opponent over you I have turned back—a sincere adviser, tireless in his reproach.

45. And many 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 out its back,added hindquarters, and pressed down with its chest:

47. “Long night, clear awayinto morning—though morning will be no better than you.”

48. What a night it was, as though its starswere bound to Yadhbul by every tightly twisted rope.

49. As though the Pleiades were fastened in their fixed placeswith stout flax ropes to solid boulders.

50. Often I set out at dawn while the birds were still in their nests,on a sleek, towering horse that shackled wild game.

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

52. Dark chestnut, with the saddle pad slipping from his smooth backas rainwater slips from a polished stone.

53. He pours forward when the other swift horses, worn with fatigue,raise dust from the hard, trampled ground.

54. Surging over his lean frame, his forceful snorting,when his heat boils within him, is the boiling of a cauldron.

55. He throws the light young rider from his backand twists the clothes of the heavy, violent horseman.

56. Racing like a child’s spinning top, which the child sets whirlingwith the turning of both hands and a tightly joined cord.

57. He has the flanks of a gazelle and the legs of an ostrich,the long stride of a wolf and the close-stepping gait of a fox cub.

58. When he bears down, it is as though upon his shoulders liesa bride’s polished grinding slab, or a stone for crushing bitter gourds.

59. His saddle and bridle stayed on him through the night,and he spent the night standing before my eyes, never released.

60. Then a herd appeared to us, its ewes likeyoung women attending Duwar in long, trailing robes.

61. They turned away like the alternating beads of a jeweled necklace,strung between pearls noble on both the father’s and mother’s side.

62. He brought us up with the leading animals, while behind the leaderthe laggards remained crowded together in a herd that had not scattered.

63. He ran one sustained course between a bull and a ewe,overtook them, and was not even splashed with sweat to be washed.

64. All day the meat cooks were divided between those preparingstrips of roasted meat and those quickly boiling a potful.

65. We returned, and the noble horse returned tossing his head;wherever the eye climbed along his body, it descended again.

66. The blood of the leading animals on his chest lookedlike henna juice in combed gray hair.

67. When you looked at him from behind, his tail filled the space between his legs,thick and flowing just above the ground, not tilted aside.

68. Harith, do you see the lightning whose flash I show you,like two hands gleaming in a cloud mass crowned with storm?

69. Its brilliance flares—or like a monk’s lampswhen he has poured oil over the 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 was pouring water after every lull,toppling great trees face-first onto the ground.

72. In Tayma it left neither a palm trunknor a fortress standing, except one built solidly of stone.

73. In the morning the summit of Mount al-Mujaymir,surrounded by floodwater and debris, looked like a spindle whorl.

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

75. Over the plain of al-Ghabit it unloaded its burden,like a Yemeni trader setting down his loaded trunks.

76. By morning the drowned beasts in it,along its farthest edges, looked like torn-up wild-onion roots.

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

78. At Baysān, with the night, it settled its massive weightand drove the mountain goats down from every refuge.