Go, then, and say to ʿAmr, al-Walīd, and Muṭʿim:
Would that the whole sum of your “protection” were but a single young camel—
A feeble, sway-backed creature that bellows and wheezes,
Its shanks spattered with the drops of its own urine;
It lags behind the herd at every watering place, never catching up,
And when it struggles up the open plain people point and cry, “A mere hyrax!”
I look at our two brothers, born of the selfsame father and mother:
When questioned they protest, “The matter lies with others, not with us.”
Yet they do have a share in it, only they mutter and mumble
Like stones that rattle down from the peak of Dhū-ʿAlaq.
I mean especially ʿAbd Shams and Nawfal—
They have cast us off as glowing embers are flicked away.
They have winked at the people against their own brothers,
And now their palms have come back to them empty.
They have let into their glory men for whom I care not a whit—
People whose names are heard only when someone hammers them home.
Taym, Makhzūm, and Zuhrah are now with them,
Though they were our allies whenever victory was sought.
By Allah, enmity shall never be severed between us and them,
Nor between them and us, so long as any eyelash of our line still stirs.
Alas, would that my share of your enclosing support were such that I neither benefit from you nor suffer loss.
And he set out, in the baramli gait, his tusk splitting—jashim: meager-ribbed, neither a full-grown she-camel (kabīr) nor a young one (bikr).
In his gloss he explains: jashim—reluctant to travel; al-qasīrī—of the weakest ribs.
(1) Al-Suhaylī, in al-Rawḍ (vol. 2, p. 10), explains: “That is, a young she-camel (bikr) would be more useful to me than you; I wish it were mine instead of your enclosure,” as Ṭarafah says of ʿAmr ibn Hind in al-Wāfir:
“Would that in place of King ʿAmr we had
a fertile pasture girding our tent so lush.”
(2) al-khawr: “the weak (camels)”; al-ḥijāb with ḥāʾ: “the small.” In the margin of Shaykh Abū Baḥr’s work it appears as jabbāb with jīm, glossed “much rumbling.” Al-Rawḍ (2/10).
(3) i.e. “it resembles the weasel (wabr) on account of its smallness”; wabr is a small mustelid about the size of a wildcat. It may also imply that he seems diminutive to the eye because of the height and distance of the locale. Al-Rawḍ (2/10); al-Nihāyah (s.v. wabr).
(4) Suhaylī’s recension in al-Rawḍ reads: “as jarjamat min ra’s dhī ʿalqin sakhr,” noting he omitted the inflection of ʿalqin either because he treated it as a place-name or a proper noun—an omission permissible in poetry. He adds that if it had been written “min ra’s dhī ʿalq al-sakhr” (dropping tanwīn to avoid two consonants in contact), it would be acceptable. Al-Rawḍ (2/10–11). He glosses jarjamat as “it fell and collapsed.” The Diwān version gives “tarjama … kamā rujimat,” explaining that tarajum means “a conjectural assertion.”
(5) In manuscript Ḥ: “al-khamr.”
(6) Aghmaz of a man, “aghmaza”: he belittled and reproached him, the tongue diminishing his status (see ghamz).
(7) “Unless he mentions it in a hidden fashion,” from rassa “he mentioned it to him.” al-Lisān (s.v. rassas).
(8) In manuscript Ṭ: “and none of you, as long as from our lineage is shafr.” The reading is confirmed from Ḥ. Shafr: “one.” It is said, “what in the house is shafr and shufur”—i.e. “one.” al-Lisān (s.v. shafr).
(9) The term does not appear in Ḥ.