Poetry Analysis

Pause and let us cry over the memory of a loved one and a home at Siqṭ al-Liwā between al-Dukhūl and Ḥawmal. And a night like the sea's waves, it spread its curtains over me with various worries to test me. So I said to it when it stretched its back and followed with weights and leaned with its heaviness. O long night, won't you clear away with the morning, and the morning is not better than you. Oh, what a night, as if its stars were tied with ropes of Yathbul. As if the Pleiades were hung in their places with linen ropes to solid rocks. And I may rise early while the birds are in their nests with a swift horse, restrained from wild beasts, a structure. Deceptive, fleeing, advancing, retreating together like a boulder of rock that the torrent has brought down from above. A bay horse, the saddle slips from its back as the smooth rock slips at the descent. It throws the light boy from its back and twists with the clothes of the heavy rider. Swift like the top of a child's spinning toy, turned by the turning of his hands with a connected string. It has the speed of a gazelle and the legs of an ostrich, and its long neck is like a wolf, and its stride is like a fox.