1. The frail, vein-riddled staff you see -
When people are destitute, it's a finger for them.

2. A herd of camels - if the wind blows once,
It leaves them and softens its voice until calmed.

3. It has its own way until, when it takes up
Residence with its soft feet, it beds down.

4. When it leaves toward the hills in the spring - instructed for it
Are guides and tenders who clothe each pregnant one.

5. And a smooth-necked she-camel whose sides
Are calloused as if she were a dead hyena stripped of its hide.

6. O Banu Wabish and allies - we've pitched by you
With no prior intent uniting us.

7. Two intermixed tribes who neighbored
Each other long ago, and were more harmonious when separated.

8. I see the people of Layla - their emir doesn't care
About the state of the grieving one, though he shatters.

9. I say - and the camels are gone, yearned for
And longed for - and I didn't hope for that at all.

10. So if today's right from you were a stay
And a departure has passed, then hurry!

11. I watched them until their camels disappeared
Among Anqa's sands, and the pregnant one kneeled down.

12. He drives them with the two guides as though
They were driving an obstinate tyrant with bleary eyes.

13. When the dust covered them, I met it
On the wilderness - streaming copiously with tears and muffled.

14. Leave Hind and Minna alone! Minna is but
Heartache, does rebuke curb your infatuation at all?

15. It saw what it showed it the day of Darat Rafarif
To fell it one day - Hunayda mortally.

16. When will we one day spread out felicitously with a raid
In which they are like lame sheep, even weaker and more submissive?

17. By the clan of Julah we left in their abodes
Severed arms and heads strewn about.

18. And wedocked the nose of every dog yet left
No mention of Bahra among the people!

19. We would kill - if killing could quell our hearts -
A thousand of Quda'a, and more.

20. So do not sever the bond of the well-rope, Jarira,
By neglecting its bucket-pulling riffraff.

21. A shield-bearing lord drives it to pasture
Between valleys and lowlands, so it browses.

22. Judges, brothers of Wathib and Sa'ib's companion
See glory in meeting a wasteland where it browses.

23. You see his face grayed without a beard
Yet still plump beneath his turban, curled up.

24. You see his heel was once two heels
And think he's lived concealed for years.

25. When it sets out from an abode, those who sleep behind it
Are the dawn's tents - and none handsomer.

26. And if recalcitrant camels stir from it
With contemptuous swinging in their gait and contempt.

27. When you spend the night between settlements, you whisper
And fall silent to any healer, however clever.

28. A troop that camped in Kuhaylah's sands
And Baynuna that always meets fate squarely.

29. As if I wasn't in Sibay'an's desert before Hind
Lamenting over the likes of Hind.

30. As if over their humps whenever the sky's
Plumage of birds appeared, it alit.

31. So start the snorting steeds, and bring down upon
The wide-eyed the fragmented iron!

32. When a hasty messenger won't suffice for it,
Send a Shu'ayb-colored leather strip slit into two.

33. He'll circle around with a coat of mail whose rings
Left no chinks or joints unlinked.

34. And a horseman who won't be deprived of his sword's share
When his spear, thrusting, splinters in a coat of mail.

35. So he cast Talhah's staff and sandals as though
They were the head of a lark with its crest held high.

36. I drove the cheek-pieced camel until it was as though
It had sunk into stagnant yellow water steeped in dye.