It is as though the tears we shed on the day they departed—tears that still pour down—had rained upon their dwelling and altered all its features.
He went on in that same ode until he said—speaking of al-Muʿtaṣim:
“Poetry itself grew jealous of him when I kept nightly vigil to compose for him, until I feared its very rhymes would clash in combat.” (1)
Al-Buḥturī would habitually exalt Abū Tammām, preferring him to himself, and would say, “I have never eaten bread except through him; I am but his follower.”
Among Abū Tammām’s verses:
“She turned for refuge to tears, dreading tomorrow’s parting, and every couch around her became a thorn bush. (2)
What rescued her from the flood of death was that his cold avoidance was the estrangement of separation, not a deliberate rejection. (3)
So pity set flowing for her rose-tinted tears of blood that coursed over a roseate cheek.
She is the full moon; the flush of her face spares her any need to endear herself to everyone she meets, even if she shows them no affection. (4)
Yet I never gathered an abundant fortune and won it except for the sake of a company already scattered. (5)
A man’s long stay among one clan wears out the twin brocades he wears; so travel abroad, and you will be renewed.” (6)
(1) The poem is reproduced in his Diwan, vol. 3, pp. 5 and 20, and consists of forty-seven lines. It is a panegyric for the caliph al-Muʿtasim Billah.
(2) Al-Tabrizi explains that tastajiruhu means “she seeks his protection,” that is, she looks to him for healing. Another reading has sarat (“she set off”) instead of ghadat (“she left at dawn”); Ibn al-Mustawfi prefers ghadat. Al-qitad refers to a thorny plant.
(3) Al-Tabrizi comments that the beloved’s burden is lightened by realizing that the aloofness is not deliberate but the result of a later separation.
(4) Both the Diwan and al-Aghani read tawaddud (with a d). Tawaddud wajhuha denotes the charm of her face—its beauty that everyone finds endearing.
(5) The Diwan version reads illā bishaml, likewise al-Aghani, the preposition bi being explicit. Al-Tabrizi interprets it as “except for a mantle that was once mine but that I tore apart, for I have been separated from my wife and children.”
(6) Al-Aghani records the variant fi l-hayy (“among the tribe”), meaning: “go abroad so they will yearn for you.” Al-dibājatan are the two cheeks, also called al-laytan. The poet may simply mean the cheeks, since they belong to the face, or he may be using al-dibājatan metaphorically, much like the expressions “the two mantles” or “the two garments,” where singular and plural convey the same idea: when one says, “So-and-so has worn out his mantle or his mantles,” the meaning is merely “his clothes.” By al-dibājatan he thus alludes to one’s outward appearance, for a person’s attire reveals his inner state.