☀ Today's Poem: "Fate The Hunter" Abū Dhuʾayb

Has Fate, no friend of grief, shocked
you into tears? What’s wrong with your body,
despite your riches? Why is every bed
you lie on a bed of stones? asked
Umaymah. My sons are dead, I said.
Their death has caused me so much pain.
Since they bade me farewell, I sigh
and cry and cannot sleep. I used to think
weeping was a folly, but loss forces us
to tears. In their haste they ignored my advice;
now they’re gone forever! True, all must sleep
the sleep of death; yet, though I know I’ll join
them soon, I’m left behind to live
a life of agony. I tried hard to protect
them, but who can stop Death? What use
are charms when Death grips you in its claws?
I cry myself blind, my eyes burning
as if pierced with thorns; I’m a stone weathered
by Time in Musharraq’s shrine. Fate
hasn’t humbled me—I put on a brave face
for foes who would rejoice in my pain.
Train the soul to be happy with less—
the more you indulge it, the more it craves.

Who can flee Fate the Hunter?
Not the onager with his harem of four mares,
braying like a slave attacked by wolves.
Well fed on grass, he drinks from the pools
on the plains watered by frequent cloudbursts,
a jenny, slender as a spear, by his side.
As his harem tarried, butting heads,
he grew grave, then frisky, but his luck ran
out: the pools dried, and he sealed
his fate by driving his mares to water.
From Sawā’ to Bathr, he risked the open
road. On the slopes between Nubāyi’
and Dhū l-‘Arjā’, the jennies were like a herd of camels
rounded up in a raid or a clutch of arrows
scattered in a gambler’s game, as he drove
them hard, like a smith whetting a blade.
When bright Canopus hunkered over Orion
like a gambler, the troop waded leg-
deep onto the pebbles of a cold pond.
They drank, then heard a noise on the far side
of a hill—like a thud or the rasp of a bow
held by a hunter poised for the kill.
The herd shied behind the barrel-chested
jack and a lean jenny. Then the hunter
shot a mare in foal—the arrow
lay on the ground in a pool of blood.
As the jack turned and exposed his flank,
the hunter groped in his quiver and a swift
Ṣā’idī shaft struck the beast
deep in his ribs. Death was dealt
by the hunter—a few mares bolted,
barely alive; others fell to their knees,
slipping in the gore, their legs as if
wrapped in striped Tazīdī cloaks.

Who can flee Fate the Hunter?
Not the scared oryx buck, spooked
by the hunting dogs at dawn, sheltered
by the roots of the arṭā from the howling wind
and rain, peering into the dark to discover
the source of the sound. As daylight warms
his back, the first dogs appear
at the head of the dusky pack and he panics.
Darting out, his path blocked by the hounds,
he charges, his sharp horns dyed
red, while his muscled limbs and striped
flanks keep their jaws at bay.
The dogs retreat as he lunges at the yelping
pack, wielding his horns like skewers
of bloody meat served at a feast.
With his slender-tipped, short-fletched
arrows in his hand, the hunter advances
and fires, allowing his dogs to escape—
the dart drives deep into the oryx’s
flank as he falls to the ground with a crash,
more majestic than a prized bull camel.

Who can flee Fate the Hunter?
Not the helmeted, ironclad warrior
whose face is covered in rust and sweat
from the heat of his chain mail, mounted
on a sunken-eyed mare grown fat
on milk into whose flesh his fingers sink.
Un-foaled, with empty teats like earrings,
she snaps the saddle ring with her pace,
but even when whipped, lathered in sweat,
thigh veins bulging, she keeps
her best speed in reserve. One day
as he feints and parries, Fate brings
him face to face with a champion mounted
on a light-framed colt as nimble
as a sure-footed ibex. The heroes dismount
and fight for glory’s prize, their warhorses
staring each other down. Both fighters
are proud of their skills—but it’s an evil day!
They’re armed with keen, fine-tempered
blades that hack off limbs, and Yazan
spears whose heads gleam like lamps,
clad in full-length, honey-smooth hauberks
forged by David or Tubba’—both lie dead
from wounds like rips in cloth beyond repair.
They lived for glory and fame—but why?