Wandering
In life I see a treasure
Dilapidated with each night
Days escape this ruination
Only time is undermined
Such days shatter all deception
The man denied a crust of bread
A shirt to close, a time to meet
Will prove himself a hard binger
I rise to combat or for pleasure
Can your opprobrium immortalize?
In your impotence to say my death
Let me contemplate it with my means
Never will I cease to drink
And savor pleasure
In reckless squandering
Of property and heritage
Tarafah ibn al 'Abd (c. 543-569)
Tarafa, or Tarafah ibn al 'Abd ben Sufyan ben Malik al Bakri (Arabic: طرفة بن العبد بن سفيان بن سعد أبو عمرو البكري الوائلي), was a 6th centuryArabian poet of the tribe of the Bakr.
After a wild and dissipated youth spent in Bahrain, left his native land after peace had been established between the tribes of Bakr and Taghlib and went with his uncle Al-Mutalammis (also a poet) to the court of the king of Hira, 'Amr ibn-Hind (died 568-9), and there became companion to the king's brother. Hira was as the time a vassal of the Persian
Sasanian Empire. Having ridiculed the king in some verses he was sent with a letter to Dadafruz Gushnasban, the Persian Governor of Southern shores of the Persian Gulf, but Tarafa and his uncle managed to escape underway.
One of his poems is contained in the Mo'allakat.
His Diwan has been published in Wilhelm Ahlwardt's The Diwans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets (London, 1870). Some of his poems have been translated into Latin with notes by B. Vandenhoff (Berlin, 1895).
