كَأَنَّ مُثَارَ النَّقْعِ فَوْقَ رُؤُوسِنَا وَأَسْيَافَنَا لَيْلٌ تَهَاوَى كَوَاكِبُهُ
Rising dust and swords resemble a night whose stars are falling.
The dust, darkness, flashing blades, and falling stars combine into a single pictorial relation. Reducing the common aspect to either dust alone or swords alone misses the distinctive force of representational simile.
When describing a composite image, name the contributing elements. Length of expression is not what makes a simile representational; it is the configuration formed by the elements.