1. Does the desert know whose blood it shed
And whose hearts this caravan has wearied

2. For us and their kin, hearts shall never
Meet in bodies that shall never unite

3. The winds could not erase their abode
He who guided them and led them erased it

4. If only the love of loved ones were just
Each heart would carry what it can endure

5. I looked at them, with grateful eyes
That have now, for tears, become hollows

6. The full moon's perfection was in them
And gave me a fatal, incurable disease

7. A light between branch and feet
Guiding without bridle the she-camels

8. An eye that offered lovers a cup
Whose pouring diminished those who pour

9. A waist on which sights are fixed
As if it is girded with belt of pearls

10. Ask about my character and my horse, sword,
Spear and the polished well-aimed arrows

11. We left behind us the Najd deserts
And avoided the Samawah and Iraq

12. Still the night, as it darkens, sees
The sword of the dawlah, the king, unsheathed

13. The musk-scented winds made it fragrant
When it opened its nostrils deeply inhaling

14. Which of you wild beasts of enemies
Dared to face his friendly caravan

15. If you but followed what his bow dispensed
It would suffice you and protect you

16. Had we travelled towards him on a path
Of fire, we would have feared no burning

17. An imam leading the leaders of Quraysh
For those who dread his displeasure or schism

18. When angry, their sword, but when calm
Their mercy even on the tumultuous mob

19. So do not blame him for grinning
When deceit bleeds and is straitened

20. The sublime ambitions guaranteed him
And his free-spirited horses bore his worries

21. When he alights at a people's ruins
Though far, he makes them neighbourly

22. If a scream reaches a place
He erects at it many speared standards

23. So between them the answer was a stab
And between them the delay was strangling

24. Encountering their death blow
Embracing their final resting place

25. His spears spend the night atop the valleys
And the tent-pegs have erected his pavilions

26. They sway as if the heroes are drunk
Debilitated at dawn yet intertwined at dusk

27. The wine was amazed that it did not intoxicate him
And he was generous without being drunk

28. Poetry waited expecting gifts
But when his rains exceeded all rains

29. We valued the price of his bounty
And fulfilled the measures due to him

30. Never could your joy be matched
Nor your generosity that remains

31. Rather we flirt with some of your bounty
The necks recoiled from it in obligation

32. A man who does not rob the dead of their hands
And whose pardon robs the captives of their shackles

33. You never intentionally declined goodness to me
Nor did I gain it from you by stealing

34. So inform those who envy me your patronage
That I am a striking lightning pursuing them

35. Can messages avail with an enemy
If they are not sharp piercing arrows?

36. When the people test a wise one
I have tasted and experienced them

37. I saw nothing in them but deceit
And nothing in their religion but hypocrisy

38. Every sea falls short of your right hand's reach
And of what you have not attained, they fall short

39. Had it not been for the Creator's power we would say
Was your creation by design or concord?

40. So neither did lunacy saddle your horse
Nor did the world taste separation from you