Dead on the Trail in Dhát al-Áda

by Ibn al-`Arabi
(translated from the Arabic by Michael Sells)

Lightning lit up
Dhát al-Áda, flashes
flickering down the valley sides.

A chain of whispering across the sky,
then thunder clashed open the rains.

Kneel the camels
they shouted, no one
listening. Halt, driver,

I plead, and let the camels graze.
I'm in love with a girl who rides
in your care, a lissome girl,

Soft her gestures, delicate
her walk, the heart
of a sad man breaks.

Mention her and the crowd
rushes up with bouquets--
on every tongue, her name!

She camps below on the lowland plains
though her home is high on a baldcap mountain.

Lowlands are highlands with her.
Every height soars, with her,
beyond the gaze.

Every ruin, she brings
to life. She turns the mirage
into waters that quench.

Every garden opens, with her,
splendorous in flower,
every cup of wine is pure.

Her countenance illumines
my night, pitch dark
in the fall of her hair my day.

The Sunderer split
my heart down center
when she let her arrows fly,

Eyes experienced
in finding the target,
burying their arrows inside.

No owl in a deserted ruin
No turtledove,
No crow

Is more baleful
than an old camel saddled
to take her whose beauty is fatal away

And leave a man
though his love was true
dead on the trail in Dhát al-Áda.


Ibn al-`Arabi (d. 638 H / 1240 C.E.), who was known as the grand master (al-shaykh al-akbar) of Sufi thought, wrote prolifically and in many genres. This poem is from his collection of lyrical poems known as the Translator of Desires (Turjumán al-Ashwáq). The poems are based on the ancient Arabian theme of lament for the lost beloved, during which the lover/persona recalls the beloved’s journey away from him. Women traveled on camel-borne palanquins, and in this poem the lover persona calls out to the camel driver to halt the beloved’s journey away from him — as if he could reverse the flow of time or be heard across the expanse of the desert. Whether the beloved is divine or human is, in this poem as in many Islamic love poems, not a question the poem cares to answer.