A.Z. Foreman | Labīd's Lament for Arbad, read in Arabic and English translation @a.z.foreman74 | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 1 hour ago
In which I read the "Lament for Arbad" attributed to the pre-Islamic poet Labīd bin Rabīˁa (c. 560), in Arabic and then in my English translation. Yet another translation I first wrote ten years ago when I first decided to try translating pre-Islamic poetry verse. What you hear in this recording is just my normal way of pronouncing literary Arabic. There's no reconstruction business in this video.
(Edit, I should have read وأهْلُهَا at verse 5, rather than وأهْلِها. The latter is a plausible reading but the former makes better sense and is reflected in my translation).
We perish and rot
but the rising stars do not.
When we are gone,
tower and mountain stay.
Once I was under
a coveted neighbor's wing.
And with Arbad, that protector
has passed away.
I'll stand ungrieved,
though Fate force us asunder
For every man
is felled by Fate one day.
I am no more enthralled
by newfound riches
than grieved by aught
that Fortune wreaks or takes.
For men are like desert camps:
one day, full of folk
but, come the morrow,
an unpeopled waste.
They pass away in flocks,
and the land stays on:
a trailing herdsman
rounding up the strays.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kin
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone!
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come...
then comes today!
Reproachful woman!
When fine lads trek forth,
can you say who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither pebble-reader
nor auguress know
what fey things God ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
In which I read the "Lament for Arbad" attributed to the pre-Islamic poet Labīd bin Rabīˁa (c. 560), in Arabic and then in my English translation. Yet another translation I first wrote ten years ago when I first decided to try translating pre-Islamic poetry verse. What you hear in this recording is just my normal way of pronouncing literary Arabic. There's no reconstruction business in this video.
(Edit, I should have read وأهْلُهَا at verse 5, rather than وأهْلِها. The latter is a plausible reading but the former makes better sense and is reflected in my translation).
We perish and rot
but the rising stars do not.
When we are gone,
tower and mountain stay.
Once I was under
a coveted neighbor's wing.
And with Arbad, that protector
has passed away.
I'll stand ungrieved,
though Fate force us asunder
For every man
is felled by Fate one day.
I am no more enthralled
by newfound riches
than grieved by aught
that Fortune wreaks or takes.
For men are like desert camps:
one day, full of folk
but, come the morrow,
an unpeopled waste.
They pass away in flocks,
and the land stays on:
a trailing herdsman
rounding up the strays.
Yes, men are like shooting stars:
a trailing light
collapsed to ashes
after the briefest blaze.
Men's wealth and kin
are but a loan of Fortune.
All that is loaned
must be at last repaid.
Men are at work.
One worker razes his building
to the ground, another
raises something great.
Among them are the happy
who seize their lot,
and unlucky others:
beggars till the grave.
If my Doom be slow in coming,
I can look forward
to ailing fingers
clenched about a cane,
While telling tales
of youth and yesteryear,
on slow legs, trying to stand
yet bent with pain.
I am become a sword
whose sheath is worn
apart by the years since smithing,
though sharp the blade.
Do not be gone!
A due date for death is meted
to all. It is yet to come...
then comes today!
Reproachful woman!
When fine lads trek forth,
can you say who of them
shall return from the fray?
Will you grieve
what fell Fortune wreaks on men?
What noble man
will disaster not waylay?
No, by your lifeblood:
neither pebble-reader
nor auguress know
what fey things God ordains.
If any of you would doubt me,
simply ask them
when a lad shall taste of Doom,
or the land taste rains.
