In the land of the Banu ‘Udhra, I saw an aged man whose body was drawn in on itself like a bird's. I asked the woman attending him who this was. "It's ‘Urwa," she told me. So I bent down close and asked him, "Does your love affect you still?" He said (meter: ṭawīl):
My gut is like a wingèd grouse of the sands,
so very sharply does it flutter.
I went round to his left side, and he repeated the verse until I'd heard it from him four times.
I was sent as tax collector to the Banu ‘Udhra, and went about collecting their taxes until, when I thought I had passed beyond their territory, a threadbare tent came into view. Lying in front of it was a young man reduced to skin and bones. On hearing my tread, he began to chant in a weak and mournful voice (meter: ṭawīl):
To the healer of al-Yamama I'll pay what's due,
and to the healer of Hajr—but first they must heal me.
Just then, a rustling came from the tent, and inside it I beheld an old woman. "Old woman," I said, "come out, for this young man has passed the point of death, in my estimation." "Mine too," she said. "I haven't heard so much as a whimper from him in over a year, except these verses lamenting his departed soul" (meter: basīṭ):
Mothers weep forever. Who weeps for me
today? Now I am the one being subtracted.
Today they let me hear it, but when I uplifted
the people that I met, I heard nothing.
She came out and lo, the man had died. So I wrapped him in a shroud and prayed over him. I asked, "Who was he?" She said, "This is ‘Urwa ibn Hizam, the man slain by love."
From Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Yazidi's recension of the Poetry of ‘Urwa ibn Hizam; cf. Poetry and Poets, the Book of Songs, the Meadows of Gold, and The Tribulations of Impassioned Lovers
