1. Your whirling patterns stirred and roused
The watchful lightning shafts that house

2. To and from the mansion of nobility
Through a street where archers carouse

3. After you they wildly raged in state
Through summer's drought and torrents late

4. While each house of the ranks, when you withdrew,
Showed like a book in fragments strewn about

5. All turned from it; you could see them there
Like a lost gazelle amid harem and nun

6. Who by passion's reins and love they steer
Men, though they are righteous women

7. Are you, after parting, of Umm Behdl
Of those estranged, remote, affection dead?

8. Who after wisdom change it for unwise acts
And whom the passionate seducer misleads

9. I knew you truly by coquetry
And nearness, that you are the evident

10. Bane, though slanderers have tried their calumny
And smooth-tongued backbiters represent

11. I put aside doubt, gave time to heal;
Suspicion goes if towering columns kneel.

12. I reached you only by a thing snatched
When the prowlers had taken it from your hands

13. I left Jarir what would change his vice,
Nor could the smoothest satirists entice.

14. I saw Jarir as one inviolate
Whom none but time's events can vindicate

15. Abu Lachma's son, you ape and clown
Who in vileness with the donkeys vie!

16. Despicable wretches, vile reprobates,
As if Jarir had molded them awry

17. Cursed sires of vileness met in line
And mothers of depravity combine

18. To beget a Jarir! Thus runs the course
That leads straight on to death's headlong force

19. The kindred of Yarbu bar good from men
Though Yarbu's kin no good can restrain

20. Misfortune haunts the stranger; none
Will build but outcasts there undone

21. When guest comes to Yarbu's dark abode
It welcomes him as would the barren clod

22. How sad the camels' bray as night comes down!
How sad the stranger's sure despairing frown

23. With Yarbu wiping vile clouts that reek
Still wet and dry with issue from the weak

24. Shame that not even death will bring relief
Should shrouds be wrapped above that shameful grief

25. When Yarbu's son approaches you to feed
Refuse, for that famished cur is vile indeed.

26. Say to Yarbu's son: "Away from me, your rags!
They are ill-omened clouts, fulfill no bags."

27. I wonder at the winds from evil blown,
And how these cull from me where I have sown

28. No seed but good; and for the mad hound's rages
I hunted down that whelp with death's stern wages;

29. So taste your portion, vile Kulaib, pretend
What mighty works you to your hurt pretend!

30. Not you but destiny has led you back
To deadly evil by its devious track.

31. No garb God clothes men with, howe'er disguised,
Excels the shame that habit hides

32. Or can conceal a soul in crime inured
Like clothing that Riyahi has procured

33. Raiment of shame is theirs; they never change
The leggings from their necks, the robes how strange!

34. Thus you fell on the Day the Camels Bellowed,
When you at night were made to ride the gallows

35. As if your faces still displayed the pocks
The pustules peppered, courage to unsex.

36. You met distress when the army returned
And first the vanquished on the gallows burned

37. We gave protection to a friend in need
When pressed, and Tigris' waters helped him speed.

38. Ma'kil we killed, and Mursel's noble son
With blades that high lifted heads, their course to run