The Storm
O friend—see the lightning there! it flickered, and now is gone, as though flashed a pair of hands in the pillar of crownéd cloud.
Nay, was it its blaze, or the lamps of a hermit that dwells alone, and pours o'er the twisted wicks the oil from his slender cruse?
We sat there, my fellows and I, twixt Darij and al-Udhaib, and gazed as the distance gloomed, and waited its oncoming.
The right of its mighty rain advanced over Katan's ridge: the left of its trailing skirt swept Yadhbul and as-Sitar;
Then over Kutaifah's steep the flood of its onset drave, and headlong before its storm the tall trees were borne to ground;
And the drift of its waters passed o'er the crags of al-Kanan, and drave forth the white-legged deer from the refuge they sought therein.
And Taima—it left not there the stem of a palm aloft, nor ever a tower, save one firm built on the living rock.
And when first its misty shroud bore down upon Mount Thabir, he stood like an ancient man in a gray-streaked mantle wrapt.
The clouds cast their burden down on the broad plain of al-Ghabit, as a trader from al-Yaman unfolds from the bales his store;
And the topmost crest on the morrow of al-Mujaimir's cairn was heaped with the flood-borne wrack like wool on a distaff wound.
At earliest dawn on the morrow the birds were chirping blithe, as though they had drunken draughts of riot in fiery wine;
And at even the drowned beasts lay where the torrent had borne them, dead, high up on the valley sides, like earth-stained roots of squills.
Nay, was it its blaze, or the lamps of a hermit that dwells alone, and pours o'er the twisted wicks the oil from his slender cruse?
We sat there, my fellows and I, twixt Darij and al-Udhaib, and gazed as the distance gloomed, and waited its oncoming.
The right of its mighty rain advanced over Katan's ridge: the left of its trailing skirt swept Yadhbul and as-Sitar;
Then over Kutaifah's steep the flood of its onset drave, and headlong before its storm the tall trees were borne to ground;
And the drift of its waters passed o'er the crags of al-Kanan, and drave forth the white-legged deer from the refuge they sought therein.
And Taima—it left not there the stem of a palm aloft, nor ever a tower, save one firm built on the living rock.
And when first its misty shroud bore down upon Mount Thabir, he stood like an ancient man in a gray-streaked mantle wrapt.
The clouds cast their burden down on the broad plain of al-Ghabit, as a trader from al-Yaman unfolds from the bales his store;
And the topmost crest on the morrow of al-Mujaimir's cairn was heaped with the flood-borne wrack like wool on a distaff wound.
At earliest dawn on the morrow the birds were chirping blithe, as though they had drunken draughts of riot in fiery wine;
And at even the drowned beasts lay where the torrent had borne them, dead, high up on the valley sides, like earth-stained roots of squills.
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