Desert Tracings

Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes by 'Alqama, Shanfara, Labid, 'Antara, Al-A'sha, and Dhu al-Rumma, translated by Michael A Sells, 76 pages

This collection presents six poems from the rich history of the Arabian qasida, a primarily oral tradition practiced amongst the bedouins in the centuries before the advent of Islam.  The typical form begins with a lament for lost love, continues to an account of a journey, and ends with a boast. 

     She takes your heart

          with the flash edge of her smile

     her mouth sweet to the kiss

          sweet to the taste.

The poems are full of images of desert animals, the desert landscape, and the ways of the desert people, who were often little more than brigands.

     I have three friends: a brave

          heart, a bare

     blade, and a long

          bow of yellow wood.

But their values are found to be preferable to those of the city.

          What you own

     is a wooly plaything,

          growing long on stubby sheep,

     then shorn.

And they are not strangers to irony and satire.

          I fell for her by chance

     She fell for another

          who fell for another

     other than her.

Remarkably complex yet not at all "sophisticated", rooted in a dynamic, living tradition spanning centuries, unmistakably tied to a specific place and time and way of life, the beauty of these Arabian odes is unique and profound.